


The One Where They Track Down an Arsonist

by DomesticatedChaos



Series: The Beacon Hills Reboot [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Allison is a Disney Princess, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Artist!Derek, Awesome Laura Hale, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, General Hale Family Feels, Laura Hale & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Laura was Stiles' babysitter, Past Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Pre-Slash, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Warning: Kate Argent, barista!Laura, past babysitter!Laura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 01:19:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DomesticatedChaos/pseuds/DomesticatedChaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Derek was never what Laura would call exuberant—no, that was strictly Laura’s territory. But after the fire, Derek withdrew completely, shutting himself off from the world. For the first week, he wouldn’t speak at all. Months after, Laura was lucky if she could get him to say a few words a day.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>It had been a long six years to get Derek to where he was now, socially (mentally, really, if Laura was going to be honest with herself). But she had a feeling Derek was never going to be quite the same happy kid who loved playing sports, pulling pranks on his younger siblings, and sneaking out at night to hang with his friends.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>That’s okay, Laura told herself. She was just happy that he was here by her side.</em>
</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>Laura gets a letter that sends her back home to Beacon Hills, Derek in tow, to investigate the deaths of her family. The mystery runs a lot deeper than she expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Raise It Up (this is a gift; it comes with a price)

**Author's Note:**

> This story came about because Laura Hale is the best character on this show that doesn't actually have any lines and dies before the show even starts. Here's what I think could have happened. (And while I was messing with the timeline, I went ahead and made Laura Stiles' babysitter. Because reasons.)

 

When Laura checked their small shared mailbox as she came home from the restaurant after an incredibly awful lunch rush, she was hoping for nothing more than junk mail. No bills, anyway. The electricity wasn’t due for a while, but the water was a tricky thing on the best of months (and considering Derek was on a painting spree again and constantly running water to wash his brushes and aprons and himself because the boy _still_ couldn’t figure out how to put pigment on canvas without getting it all over him first…). So yes, Laura really hoped the water bill wasn’t in yet. It’d be the icing on the fucking cake of her day if it was.

She pulled out three letters and a flyer for some kind of community theater. She tucked the flyer aside for Derek. The envelopes she rifled through as she trudged up the stairs to their fourth floor closet.

One letter was for Derek from NYU. Another was the dreaded water bill. And the last was addressed to her, with no return address. She shuffled it back into the pile, and turned her attention to the water bill.

It wasn’t until she was inside the tiny apartment, their home for the last three years, showered and ready to glare angrily at their dwindling bank accounts to tackle the bills before she opened the letters. Derek’s was a reminder about caps and gowns for the graduation ceremony. The water bill was horrendous, but not as bad as last fall when Derek had taken an eight week fucking sculpting course and gone through water like they owned an ocean. And the last, the letter addressed to Laura, was a couple of newspaper clippings.

Newspaper clippings from Beacon Hills.

She sat heavily on to the couch, papers in hand. They were articles, a few days apart, about animal attacks—deer mostly—around the Preserve. According to the landmarks mentioned in the one article, these animals were awfully close to Hale property.

Possibly _on_ Hale property.

The newspaper smelled as expected—newsprint, ink. The envelope smelled strongly of sharp chemicals, something like medicine or the muscle balm her coworker used on her legs after pulling a double shift. The address was written in a black pen in a slightly sharp penmanship.

She gleaned nothing else from it.

Holding the clippings in her hand, she sat deep in thought until Derek got home from class, slinking into the house with the stealth of a cat. He dropped off his bag and wandered to the couch, not bothering to announce his presence because she knew he was already there. He hovered over her shoulder.

Finally, he asked, “What is that?”

Laura held the envelope with the clippings over her head. Derek grabbed them, and she tucked her legs onto the couch, chin on her knees as she contemplated the meaning. She listened to him flip through the thin pieces of paper.

“It smells like medicine,” he said finally.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

She didn’t have to turn her head to know that Derek was glaring at her. But she turned anyway, bracing her arms over the back of the couch to peer up at his scowling face. He stared at the newspaper clippings as if he could glare them into submission.

“I need to go back,” Laura said, coming to her decision.

Derek looked up suddenly at her. “No.” 

“Derek—“ she countered, but he beat her to it.

“Because of this? This is _nothing,_ ” he growled. He tossed the clippings at her, and they fluttered to her lap.

Laura stood up, using what she could of her height (not that she had any on Derek. Derek’s been at least three inches taller than her, and now a solid five inches, ever since they left Beacon Hills) to even their stances. “These are not _nothing_ ,” she hissed. “After six years, and this?” She ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t care what you do. I’m going back. I have to look into these.”

Derek made a low, small noise in the back of his throat that he quickly swallowed. “Why now?”

“Because this is the first lead we’ve had in six years, that’s why now,” Laura spat. “Jesus, Derek, our family _died_ , how can you—“

“I know!” Derek roared. Laura snarled in response. But before she could reply, he added, quieter but no less angry, “I know. Jesus Christ, Laura, I get it. I’m just asking…” he trailed off, huffing a breath.

“What?” Laura barked. Derek was _always_ doing this, trailing his feet whenever it came to _anything_ pertaining to back home. It was like he didn’t want to have anything else to do with it, like he didn’t care—

“I graduate in a few weeks, okay?” Derek said. “I’ve got my final exhibition on Monday, then finals, then…” He wandered, somewhat aimless, to their small kitchen and sat on their folding chairs (Laura never got around to upgrading that cheap dorm dining set). “Can you wait until then?”

He barely spoke, voice just a tad higher than a whisper. But Laura’s ears caught it all the same. She couldn’t not hear every utterance that boy made. Every breath.

She collapsed against the couch. “Shit, Derek, I—“ He didn’t look up. “Yeah,” she continued. “Yes. Of course. What’s a few more weeks?”

She owed him that, after all that had happened.

Then after, after they would finally put it all to rest.

 

It was more than six weeks later that found Laura and Derek crossing into Beacon Hills city limits, all of their worldly belongings (including Derek’s shiny new art degree, framed with a cheap frame Laura got on clearance) stuffed into a couple of duffels and suitcases and their dad’s old trunk. They figured  they weren’t going to renew the lease on their apartment in New York anyway, now that Derek no longer needed somewhere close to NYU, and they really didn’t know how long their (Laura’s) mission was going to take. So they took the time to sell their cheap furniture (and eventually abandon by the street what no one would buy) and close out their lease.

Literally everything that mattered was in the car with them, and now they were back home.

They found a inexpensive motel on the outskirts of town, away from the hustle and bustle of the city folk, but also out of the inflated prices of the cabins and so-called resorts near the preserve. It was well into the summer season now, and lots of people came all over to “tour” the wildlife of Northern California.

Laura and Derek and their siblings used to scare them on hot summer nights when they got bored and restless. Derek was especially good at popping out behind bushes, but Cora made the best calls of various fauna. (Laura would never forget the day Cora made a passable impression of a Komodo dragon, scaring the tourists into thinking the lizards from Jurassic Park were loose in the woods. Laura laughed until she cried at the look on their faces. Cora had been _so_ proud, and their mother _so_ mad.

That memory was burned into her mind’s eye, right next to the one of her home on fire, and her precious little sister and brothers burning up along with everyone else she had ever loved before.)

“You okay?” Derek’s voice interrupted Laura’s reverie. She blinked, and realized she had been just standing there, hand on a duffle bag in the trunk of the Camaro, not moving. She shook herself out of it.

“Just…” she started. “Just remembering when Cora shrieked like a lizard at those tourists.”

Derek was quiet. He hauled another bag over his shoulder. “Komodo dragon.”

Laura nodded. “Yeah.”

Great. Now they were _both_ sad.

They entered their new abode for the foreseeable future and dumped the luggage in front of the TV. They’d unpack later. For now, though, Laura wanted to look around. Re-acquaint herself with the town. See what changed and what hadn’t. And she wanted Derek with her, to gauge his reactions to the city that birthed them both, and subsequently killed everything they ever loved.

Because Laura had an inkling, a growing niggling nag in the back of her mind that maybe? Just maybe, when this was all over and she finally knew who set that fire, that maybe she wouldn’t leave Beacon Hills.

And if she didn’t leave, she’d really like for Derek to stay with her.

“I’m going out,” Laura said when they carefully hauled Dad’s trunk into their tiny shared room. (It’s okay. Their first apartment in New York was smaller than this room. They would manage, just like they did then.)

Derek looked up from examining the TV directory laminated and taped on the shared nightstand between the two beds. “Where are you going?”

“Just to poke around.” Laura shrugged. “Maybe visit Uncle Peter.”

Derek paused for a long moment. Laura waited. “Do you want me to go with you?” he asked finally.

“I wouldn’t mind it.”

“Okay.”

So, once again, they piled into the Camaro and headed off into the wild.

 

Derek was never what Laura would call exuberant—no, that was strictly Laura’s territory. But after the fire, Derek withdrew completely, shutting himself off from the world. For the first week, he wouldn’t speak at all. Months after, Laura was lucky if she could get him to say a few words a day.

It had been a long six years to get Derek to where he was now, socially (mentally, really, if Laura was going to be honest with herself). But she had a feeling Derek was never going to be quite the same happy kid who loved playing sports, pulling pranks on his younger siblings, and sneaking out at night to hang with his friends.

That’s okay, Laura told herself. She was just happy that he was here by her side.

 

Beacon Hills had a long-term care facility attached to its rather large hospital. And for the past six years, it had been home to one Peter Hale, in a coma with burns over more than 60% of his body. Frankly, Laura had been surprised Uncle Peter survived at all—if a werewolf couldn’t heal the damage inflicted on them in a day or two, they usually didn’t heal at all.

Derek was quiet all through the hospital. He stood at the doorway, barely inside the room at all, watching Laura as she sat and reintroduced herself to her uncle.

It’d been six years, after all. She thought maybe if he smelled her, smelled someone of their family, of pack, maybe he’d heal. Wake up.

“We’re going to be here for a while,” she said, brushing her hand against his, smearing her scent on his skin. She sat with him for a little longer, mostly in silence, before deciding it was probably best to leave. The nurse smiled stiffly at them as they left. Laura supposed she thought them ungrateful—it was the first time they had visited their uncle since he was moved out of the burn unit and into the long-term care ward.

Laura didn’t feel very much like explaining themselves to a nurse.

They were nearly out the door when Derek closed the distance between them to stride beside her. “Do you still have the envelope?”

Laura stopped. “Envelope?” She realized he meant the one that started this whole thing—the one that sent them back to Beacon Hills in the first place. She pulled it out of her pocket, and Derek took it before she could even offer it to him.

He looked at it for a moment. “It smells the same.”

She raised an eyebrow.

He rolled his eyes. “As here,” he clarified. “The hospital smells like…”

“Bleach and medicine.”

“Yeah.”

Laura plucked the envelope out of his hands. “How about that?” she muttered, and shoved the thing back in her pocket. Derek had his hands back in his leather jacket, staring slightly downcast ahead of them.

Maybe it didn’t mean anything, but it was strange. Who in the hospital would want to send them articles about animal attacks? Or care enough to track down their address in New York? Laura frowned at the polished floor as they exited the building, half-spun theories running through her mind.

 

They poked around town a little. Beacon Hills used to be a bustling, growing city, doing well (extremely well) in the dot-com boom of the nineties. They even had a half-baked dream of building a subway system—be a real city, like Los Angeles or San Francisco.

Then the economy crashed, and Beacon Hills not only stopped growing, but started shrinking. Abandoned businesses and construction projects nearly outnumbered the inhabited areas.

Most of this happened when Laura was still in high school, the brunt of the economic devastation padded by the trivial concerns of socialite teenagers. But to drive around Beacon Hills and still see a number of the same abandoned construction sites that she trespassed and partied at when she was an idiot junior? Completely disheartening.

“Ooh, look! That’s a new hardware store.” She pointed.

Derek shrugged.

Well, it was the little things, anyway.

 

They ate dinner at the old diner their dad used to take the family out to, especially after the full moon when the kids had their energy run out of them and were easier to manage. (For days leading up to the full moon, the kids were confined mostly to the house and property, their blood singing and sparking and urging them to tear across the place like the beasts everyone accused them of being. Their mother used to say they were “barely fit for the company of troll.” Laura had always wondered whenever she heard her mother use that turn of phrase if trolls were indeed real. She and Thomas and Derek would sometimes sneak out to try to find some, but they never succeeded.)

The diner was the exact same as she remembered it. They even had the same menu.

“What do you want, Derek?” Laura asked.

Derek raised an eyebrow.

Laura stared at him back.

“What am I, twelve?” he replied.

She shrugged. She couldn’t help but wish that maybe with the familiar surrounds, doing familiar things in the same place they grew up, Derek would finally lose that haunted look that overshadowed his features like a great looming whale. She was afraid that one day she would wake up to find it had swallowed Derek whole.

“So, Peter’s doing better than I expected.” She tore at the napkin wrapped around her set of utensils.

Derek lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “He’s catatonic.”

“Yeah, but he’s not… You know.” Laura searched for the words to put her thoughts in order, and couldn’t find them. “I thought he’d be worse.”

Derek grunted, head down. Laura stared at him for a moment. She could remember a time when it had been so easy to talk to Derek—when they had shared all their secrets with each other. Now, though, she’d have better luck pulling out his teeth. The last few years had been hard on them, sure, but Laura never expected her brother to turn into such a mystery.

She left it for now, and they rested slightly uncomfortably in the silence. Laura got the chicken salad. Derek ended up with a hamburger.

It didn’t taste as good as she remembered.

 

They drove past the Preserve on the way back to the motel. It was still a week before the full moon, but they had been cooped up in the Camaro for almost five days on end.

“How about a run?” Laura asked, slowing the car to a mild amble down the winding roads.

“I’d rather sleep.”

It was dark, but wolves had good eyesight, Alphas especially so (she'd always known she’d be Alpha someday. She just never imagined so soon). Yet Laura still couldn’t read the expression on his face. His heartbeat remained steady, and there were no acrid smells of stress. Derek remained impenetrable.

He turned to glance at her. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Sure.”

Laura would take whatever she could get.

 

They ended up bickering over TV shows for the rest of the night. It was the most fun Laura had had in months.

 

In the morning, Laura pulled out the newspaper printings that had brought them here. She mulled over them while Derek was in the shower.

“I’m thinking of calling the guy who wrote these?” she said as soon as he emerged, still dripping and scrubbing a towel through his hair. He looked at her, his face clearly questioning what the hell she was going on about. She waved the articles at him, the paper making a light thwiping sound in her fingers.

Derek’s confused look dropped to his normal blank stare. “Not a bad idea.”

Laura beamed at him. “I figured he can at least tell me where these animals were found.”

Derek nodded. “Then we can sniff around.”

“Exactly.”

Derek turned his back to her, his triskele tattoo (that damned triskele tattoo she had to burn into Derek’s flesh with a torch) stark against his pale skin. He got dressed while Laura smiled so hard it hurt.

 

She found the guy’s name in the phone book. Thank goodness he was the only “Martin Hammerbeck” in it. But he turned out to be a bit of an ass.

“Why do you care about some dumb animal attacks? They were destined for road kill anyway.”

Laura stifled a growl of frustration. “Because I haven’t been in town for a while, and I think these deer were found near my parents' property.” She did not add ‘You insensitive jackass,’ but she hoped the sentiment came across all the same.

The guy was quiet on the other line. “You’re a Hale, then. Yeah?”

“Yes,” Laura answered.

“Look, there’s not really much to it,” the guy said, but his tone was so much more patronizing than ingratiating jerk. “Yeah, the animals were found near your old place.”

Laura breathed in heavily. “Okay.”

“But they were killed by another animal,” he continued. “You know, mauled. It was probably some,” he hesitated. Laura hated talking on the phone. She couldn’t hear his heart over this crappy mountain reception. “Probably some mountain lion,” he finished.

Laura was quiet a moment. Derek stared at her. She growled at the phone, “Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me everything?”

“Look,” he said. “I didn’t get real close to them, you know? But the cops, they called in the vet from the animal clinic. Like an expert, you know? He examined them up close. You want more, talk to him.”

“Thank you,” Laura said.

“Don’t call again.”

Laura hung up the phone. Derek sat on his bed, facing her, his unreadable blank look back on his face.

“I think that went well,” she told him.

He frowned.

 

There was only one animal clinic in Beacon Hills, and only one vet that worked there, according to the plaque on the side of the building.

“Well, that should have been obvious,” Laura muttered. Derek snorted.

She remembered the name Dr. Alan Deaton from her father. They were friends, of a sort, back in the day. They always talked behind closed doors though, and her father allowed no eavesdropping. (Thomas found this particularly frustrating, especially since he had no heightened wolf abilities to help him in his espionage endeavors. Laura always found his anger strange.)

While their father apparently trusted and sought Deaton’s counsel, their mother did not.

“The man smells like too many secrets,” she had muttered darkly one afternoon after Thomas’s persistent pestering. “Your father can do what he wants, but I don’t trust a man who can’t tell me plainly what he ate for dinner last night.”

They mother always did have a way of phrasing things.

But their father had trusted him, even if their mother didn’t, and it seemed like their clues were leading them right to his door, so Laura figured they didn’t have much of a choice. “Ready?”

Derek snorted. “It’s your show, Lars.”

“Don’t be that way, dork.”

“Jerk,” he returned.

“Bitch.”

Laura grinned and punched him in the shoulder.

They entered the animal clinic softly, carefully closing the door behind them as opposed to letting it slam shut on its own. They waited quietly. Quiet was always best for places like these. Animals did not like being sick or hurt, and liked werewolves even less. Better to not poke at a hornet’s nest when the hornets were already angry. A somewhat-familiar man in the white smock of a medical practitioner came out to greet them.

“Well,” Dr. Deaton said upon seeing them standing stiffly in his waiting room. “May I guess: Laura and Derek Hale?”

Laura nodded.

Deaton smiled. “It’s been a while.” He opened up the gate separating the lobby from the reception desk. “Come in. What can I do for you?”

He led them to the examination room in the back. Laura wasted no time in showing him the articles about the animal attacks. “What can you tell me about these?”

He took them from her, and made a show of examining each very carefully. Laura turned to look at Derek, who was lurking in the doorway of the room, looking even less impressed than his normal apathetic state, his brows so furrowed over his eyes she couldn’t see his top lids. Laura had one blindingly bizarre moment where she was afraid that Derek’s eyebrows would literally eat away at the flesh of his face, like mutant caterpillars.

He caught her staring and gave her a look. She quickly turned back around.

“I’m not sure I can—“ Dr. Deaton started. He looked strangely apologetic for a man being confronted by little slips of paper.

Laura huffed. “We know the police asked you to give your opinion. We just want to know what that opinion _was_.”

Deaton placed the clippings down on the stainless steel table in between them. “There’s really not much to tell.”

Derek made an aborted growl at him, but the vet continued.

“It’s true, the animals had been mauled—almost mutilated. But none of the flesh eaten, the organs intact. It was violence for violence’s sake, not to feed.”

“And?” Laura prompted.

“And.” Deaton sighed. “And there was a symbol, carved into their hides, with something sharp yet curved.”

“Like a claw?” Derek piped up behind her. She widened her eyes at him, but Derek’s gaze remained steadfastly fixed on the doctor’s face.

“Could be a claw, yes.” Deaton nodded. “The symbol was the same on each animal. A spiral.”

Laura let out a long, slow breath. Deaton stared her down across the table.

“You’re aware of the significance of the spiral, Laura?” he said.

“I know my family’s folklore.” She gathered up the articles and tucked them back into her pocket.

Deaton turned to fiddle with some jars in the cabinet to the side of the room. “I never said you didn’t,” he said, almost cautiously. He turned to face her, closing the cabinet door gently. “I’m assuming that you’re not just here to talk about some animal attacks.”

Laura shrugged. “It’s what brought us back here in first place.”

Deaton waited patiently for her to continue. She heard Derek shifting behind her, leather jacket brushing up against the doorway. She heard him breath shallowly—the smell of the place was starting to get to her as well. Like something crawled up her nose and died.

“I—“ She paused. “I don’t think the fire was an accident, like the police said.”

Deaton nodded like he knew all along. “It’s odd, don’t you think? So many werewolves dying in a fire caused by little more than an accident?”

Laura stared at the vet. Derek had stopped moving completely. She could barely hear him breathing, but his heart continued, strong as ever. “What do you know?” she growled.

“Nothing, I’m afraid. Just speculation.”

“And what exactly do you _speculate_?” She tossed the word back at him instead of the punch she wanted to swing at his nose.

Deaton looked at her as if he knew the violence she was barely holding back. And the man smirked. “Only that I find it very unbelievable that an ordinary fire could have caused that amount of devastation.” His gaze shifted behind her for one quick moment, before returning to Laura’s. “At least, not without a little help.”

Laura frowned. It’s true, she did think it strange that a family of werewolves wouldn’t be able to get themselves out of a house fire. Seven completely able supernatural creatures with enhanced strength and speed and healing (and three wonderfully ordinary human pack-mates that they cherished and would have died for—did die for). Shit, regular humans escaped from house fires all the time—so how did her family _not?_

She knew in her gut that the fire wasn’t an accident. But she had no _proof._ If Deaton knew anything, anything atall, she wanted it. “What kind of help?”

Deaton shrugged. “I’d imagine it they would have to cause the fire to burn much hotter and much faster than it normally would have. But,” he said with a little, mysterious grin he directed towards the floor, “I’m just a vet.”

Laura just stared at him. Derek shifted uneasily behind her. The smell of the place spiked sharply in her nose.

“Is there anything else?” Deaton asked, folding his hands on the table in between them.

Her building exasperation with the man had hit its peak, and Laura wanted nothing more than to leave this small, clinical room filled with strange animal smells and a man more thoroughly cloaked in enigma than the white doctor’s coat he wore. But, because she had lived several years off the mercy of humans and knew the importance of being polite, she bit out a quick, “No, thank you.” She spun on her heel and stalked to the door. “Come on, Derek,” she said. Derek followed readily.

“I’m not your enemy, Laura,” Dr. Deaton called after them.

She hunched her shoulders and fought the urge to howl.

 

She felt marginally better as soon as she was back in the Camaro, surrounded by the familiar smell of leather and oil and that silly cinnamon-scented aftershave Derek liked. Breathing deep, she toyed idly with the keys, unsure of what to do.

“That was helpful,” Derek commented drily.

“Yeah, well,” Laura muttered. “That man pisses me off.”

“It smelled awful in there. Like cat piss and wet dog.”

“Yeah.” Laura thought about it. Yes, it did smell awful in there (and it _did_ smell heavily of cat and dog—not surprising considering it’s an animal clinic). But there was an underlying smell of something vaguely woodsy, maybe floral, that buried itself under the delicate flesh of her nose and nested there, stabbing sharp needles of discomfort into her with every breath. It made her restless and uneasy.

“Whatever,” Laura said after a moment, giving up on trying to pinpoint what it was that had her so on edge. “You hungry?”

Derek shrugged. “I could eat.”

 

They got fast food that they ate in the car. The curly fries were fantastic. She and Derek had a slap fight over them, each trying to steal each other’s (she started it, but she blamed Derek anyway). They ended up having to go through the drive thru again to order more.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a day.

 

Laura was glad they weren’t quite sitting on square one; however, she really didn’t have much more than she started with. She ended up going out and getting a little notebook to keep in her jacket pocket to start writing everything down in. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be a detective, like on the crime shows Derek loved to make fun of.

She decided to start with the articles, because they were what brought them here in the first place.

First, the spiral. Only werewolves really knew what it meant. Werewolves, and possibly any surviving people that they’ve used it on.

Werewolves had a long history in marking things in glyphs. They had family symbols used to mark territory—so much more efficient (not to mention, less likely to alert hunters to their presence) than putting up signs of “My Land, No Non-Pack Allowed.” They had other symbols, too: to warn, to alert, to direct. A whole rudimentary language in glyph form.

The spiral? That meant revenge.

Generally speaking, the spiral was carved into someone after revenge was sought and acquired. A warning to other packs that the debt had been paid in blood, that it was not an act of aggression but merely a… domestic dispute, as it were. Pack politics were sometimes Neanderthalish in nature, any toe towards crossing pack boundaries typically being read as an attempt at a hostile takeover. The spiral was a way to show other wolves that this particular damage was retribution for a wrong first committed by the victim.

Sometimes, though, the spiral was used to call for revenge. A beacon to bring other wolves together to rise up and exact a price in blood that one lone wolf may not be able to accomplish on his or her own.

Laura stared pensively out the window towards the preserve. The deer had been found on Hale property. It was a calling.

She had _definitely_ been brought here for a reason.

But, the spiral was inherently a _werewolf_ custom, and as far as she knew, there _were_ no more wolves in Beacon Hills. Peter, yes, but he was comatose. And Laura and Derek had been gone for years.

She supposed that another wolf could have moved in without her knowledge, but why would they care about her family’s deaths? No, if it was another wolf, they would have never alerted Laura in such a manner; they would have moved in, set up pack lines, and actively tried to run Laura off their newly acquired territory, not call her to it.

So, who could have sent the calling?

Laura was starting to hate mysteries.

 

That evening, Derek stood up, fidgeting near the foot of his bed in a way Laura hadn’t seen since he asked if he could go to art school.

“What’s up, baby bro?” she asked, idly writing more questions in her notebook. (Well, mostly she was doodling little spirals and flowers in the corners—she had written down all her questions until the sheer amount of them made her so angry she wanted to take a bite out of the paper. So she drew flowers instead. Never let it be said she didn’t know how to control her own emotions.)

Derek glared at the moniker. “Thought I’d take you up on that run?” he half-asked, half-stated. He had his hands shoved so deep in the pockets of his jacket it made odd little jutting triangles of the hem.

Laura could hardly believe it. Derek, asking her for something? Of entirely his own volition? She fought down a grin as she flipped the notebook closed. “Sure,” she said brightly. “Woods?”

“Yeah.”

It was dark by the time they found a place to park. The preserve was closed for the night, but there were still campers and the random local that didn’t believe in trees having office hours. They wound the Camaro through the dusty back roads to the other side of the preserve, away from the more popular (and populated) sections.

They left the car pulled well off the road. Derek shed his jacket and cracked his neck, preparing for his shift. Laura considered hers.

Shrugging out of her own jacket, she decided she’d go full wolf on the full moon in a few days. For now, her beta form was enough.

Derek was already turned when Laura locked up the car and hid her keys (didn’t want to lose them out in the woods somewhere—they could sniff them out again, but it was dark and hiding them was better). She grew out her teeth, letting her hind brain blink forward and her wolf take control. (The dual personality of the werewolf was a total misnomer. She was her wolf, and the wolf was her. She just… didn’t always act like it, and sometimes she needed to let the wolf go, before it got too cooped up. She thought maybe it was the human equivalent of cutting loose and going wild, but having never been human, she wasn’t sure.)

“Race you,” she shot at Derek.

He grinned, and lit off into the trees.

Laura couldn’t actually remember the last time that Derek had asked her to do something for him. To take an initiative with his own happiness. The fact that he had asked her for this run made her excited and elated all over. Maybe this moving back to Beacon Hills _was_ a good idea. Maybe it really was helping him.

They chased each other, sometimes Derek in the lead, sometimes Laura, playfully shoving at each other when one caught up to the other, roughhousing over the forest floor until they were covered in dirt and debris, twigs in their hair. Derek smeared mud on Laura’s face and Laura tackled him, full-bodied, onto the ground and sat on his chest, howling her victory.

They couldn’t get away with stuff like this in New York.

Laura was laughing by the time they walked back to the car. Even Derek seemed lighter. She fished the keys from underneath the rock she had hidden behind the front right tire, and unlocked the car doors. “Milkshakes?” she called over the roof of the car at Derek.

He actually smiled at her, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “You’re buying.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. 

 

Laura was completely aware of the odd looks humans often gave them. Sometimes it was entirely because of their attire, but she’d be damned if she was going to tell Derek to give up their father’s leather jacket because it made the humans uneasy. The humans could fucking _deal_ with it.

But when they waltzed up to the counter and took seats at the bar, Laura credited the odd looks they received from the waitress to the fact they were covered in dirt and grime, not their clothing choices.

Even so, the waitress slid them both menus, and readied her notepad.

They barely placed their orders before a voice called out behind them. “Well, you kids look like you had fun tonight.”

Laura spun on her seat. She hadn’t heard anyone sneak up on—

Oh. It was a man in the booth behind them, turned away from his plate of pork chops and mashed potatoes to look at her and Derek. He was also in the beige colors of the sheriff’s office uniform, complete with radio and side arm.

Laura blinked at him a moment. “Uh,” she stammered.

His eyes flicked up to her hair. Laura raised her hand to her head and found a leaf there. Ah crap.

Quickly plucking it out (and patting herself off to try to rid her person of anymore mud or forest debris), she grinned a bit guiltily. Beside her, Derek scrubbed at a streak of dirt on his grey tank top and frowned angrily at it when it refused to disappear.

“Guess you could say that, sir.” She stopped then, because she recognized who it was. She flicked her eyes to the stitched-on surname over his left breast pocket. “Officer Stilinski?”

Derek looked up suddenly, pinning the man with a stare.

The man chuckled and tapped the star on his chest. “It’s Sheriff now, actually—“ then he, too, stopped and stared at them. “Laura Hale?” he tried, cautious.

Laura’s sheepish grin turned genuine. “Yeah.”

Officer—no, Sheriff Stilinski looked torn between acting professional and getting up to give the pair a hug. “I barely recognized you,” he settled on saying, remaining seated in his booth. He nodded at Derek. “And Derek. How are you, son?”

“Fine, sir,” Derek mumbled. He stared at his sneakers. Laura nudged him in the ribs.

“I didn’t realize you were back in town,” the sheriff continued, kindly ignoring Derek’s anti-social tendencies.

“Got in a few days ago,” Laura answered.. She had the sudden urge to admit that she was looking into her family’s murder, especially because the man had worked on the case himself. But she wasn’t sure how well that would go over, and bit her tongue. She changed the subject instead, smiling politely. “How’s Genim?”

Sheriff Stilinski looked surprised at the sudden turn in the conversation, but Laura caught the proud smile he tried to cover up. “Good. Growing like a weed—nearly as tall as me, now. Getting into all sorts of trouble.”

She smiled and nodded and was fully prepared to turn back around and let the man get back to his midnight meal when the sheriff fixed her with a stare. “You two haven’t been in the woods tonight, have you?”

Shit. Laura suddenly felt fourteen again, pinned under his gaze like she was just the babysitter and had been caught helping a six-year-old Genim Stilinski make a paper-mache reproduction of the Death Star in his kitchen. “Uh…”

“There’s some kind of mountain lion going a bit kill crazy up there. You and Derek should steer clear of the woods until we can find it and stop it,” the sheriff said. “It’s not safe out there right now.”

Laura nodded. “Yes sir.”

The waitress returned with their milkshakes. Sheriff Stilinski stood up, apparently finished with his dinner. He clapped both of them on the shoulder before walking up to the till to pay for his meal. “Good to see you two again.”

She and Derek watched him leave, eyes trailing silently after him as he climbed into the police cruiser and drove off. Laura turned to Derek.

Derek shrugged, silent.

She left him to his chocolate milkshake and his thoughts, and immersed herself in her own.

Damn, these were fantastic milkshakes.

 


	2. Shake It Out (it’s always darkest before the dawn)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laura continues her investigation, runs into some hunters, and somehow manages to not get them killed or arrested in the process. Derek is not amused.

Ever since her visit with Deaton, Laura had thought a lot about the fire, going over the memories of that day. Most of it was a blur of grief and pain, and the aftermath of the devastation overshadowed much of the actual fire. She and Derek had stayed for three, gruesome, pain-filled weeks while the police and fire department investigated their family. They salvaged what little they could out of the house, but not much survived. After three weeks, the preliminary investigation concluded that the fire was an extremely unfortunate accident, and Peter Hale was declared comatose with no clear hope of ever regaining consciousness.

So they took what they could, bought bus tickets, and moved as far away as possible.

But there was no way it was an accident. Laura knew that in her gut. The fire was too hot and too bright and burned almost pink.

She had never thought about it before, because she had never encountered a fire that big, big enough to consume an entire person’s life. She always thought that’s what life-destroying fires _looked_ like. Smelled like.

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe that’s not how fires should look at all.

“I need to get that report,” Laura murmured to herself. Derek looked up from his push-ups.

“What report?” he asked, switching to one arm (show-off) and looked at her.

“The arson investigation report.” Laura stared at her notebook, hoping that the answers would magically appear. “I remember they said it was an accident. But…”

Derek rolled over to his back and started his sets of sit-ups. “But it wasn’t an accident.”

“So the investigator missed something.”

“Or lied.”

She stared at Derek. “Or lied,” she repeated.

Okay. Now she _really_ needed to get her hands on that report.

 

After breakfast, Laura dropped Derek off at the art store in town while she headed to the sheriff’s office. She didn’t really want to be separated from him, but he practically begged.

Okay, he said please once. But for Derek, that was begging.

 

She walked through doors she never really thought she’d walk through again. Last time she was here, she had been bundled with Derek in tow after being checked out from the hospital after the fire. Mr. Stilinski himself had driven them, making sure they were okay with the doctors before temporarily dropping them off at the station. They stayed at his house that first night, before they both realized it would be too hard living with humans when all they wanted to do was howl their grief at the moon like the wolves they were.

So they got a hotel room, no matter how much little Genim Stilinski begged them to stay.

Laura took a deep breath, scenting the air around her. It smelled overpoweringly of bad coffee and starch and faintly of sweat and oil and wood polish.

Also, oranges. Which was a bit of a strange combination, but it seemed to work.

“Can I help you?” the deputy on duty asked. Laura stepped forward.

“I need a copy of a police report.”

The deputy stared.

Laura tried again. “Please?”

“Do you have a case number?”

Shaking her head, she said, “No. But it’s for the Hale House fire. October 12, 2004.”

The deputy gave her a long, hard look. He looked like he was about to say something (his heart skipped two beats. Laura kept her face as blank as possible), but thought better of it. He turned to his computer monitor, and typed in a string of keys.

Turning away from the computer, he said, “I’m sorry, this is an ongoing investigation and has been marked classified. I’m afraid I can’t give you any details.”

Laura frowned. “Ongoing? I thought the arson investigation was finished six years ago.”

The deputy looked torn. “It was reopened,” he finally settled on saying.

“So,” Laura started slowly. “So they don’t think it’s an accident? There’s something to actually investigate?”

“I can’t give you any more information than that, ma’am.”

Laura put her hands on the counter, leaning in. “Can you at least give me the name of the first arson investigator? The one that ruled it an accident?”

“I can’t. It’s—“

Laura closed her eyes and blurted, “I’m Laura Hale. It’s my family. My house that burned. Please, I just…” She took in a deep breath. “Please.”

The deputy sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “John’s going to kill me,” he said softly under his breath. But he did look up at Laura.

“Garrison Myers. He was the insurance investigator. He ruled it an accident before the arson investigator could come up from Sacramento. But BHFD conducted their own investigation, and collaborated with our offices when they suspected arson. Now look,” he said, leaning in. “I could get in a lot of trouble for just telling you that. This case has been marked classified.”

Laura looked the man straight in the eyes while she listened to his heartbeat. He was sincere.

“Okay. Thank you.” She stepped away slowly from the desk.

“Seriously, don’t mention it,” the deputy snorted, easing back into his chair.

With a wry grin in the man’s direction, Laura left the station.

 

Laura went back to the art store and found Derek glaring at a display of graphite pencils. He had a sketchbook tucked under his arm. She hovered by his shoulder for a moment.

“Project?” she wondered. Derek shrugged, and finally settled on a package, plucking it from the shelf peg.

“You get what you needed?” he asked. Laura stuck her hands in her pockets. She followed him as he left the aisle and headed towards the check-out counter at the front of the store.

“Not really,” she admitted. “Apparently they can’t just hand out that kind of stuff.”

Derek frowned at her. “So,” he hedged. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

“I’ve got a few ideas,” she told him. The first of which might get her in trouble, and that Derek probably wouldn’t like.

Okay, she was _positive_ Derek wouldn’t like it.

She just hoped he’d talk to her afterwards.

Derek paid for his supplies and they headed back to the Camaro. Laura had already looked up Garrison Myer’s address in a picked-over phone book chained to the solitary payphone outside the station. When she turned away from the street that would lead them back to their motel, Derek raised an eyebrow. Cutting off whatever protest he was going to raise, Laura said, “I just have to make a pit-stop first.”

Derek didn’t look convinced, but he settled deeper into his seat—which was a good enough sign to Laura.

They pulled up in front of a small, falling-apart ranch house in the sketchier part of Beacon Hills. The houses were in better shape than some of the terrible living conditions she saw in New York, but even so, it was still a far cry from the affluent areas of town. At least most of the buildings had roofs overhead.

“Where are we?” Derek asked, climbing out of the car after Laura.

“Garrison Myers’ place,” Laura said, squaring her shoulders. She walked up the short path to the front door. “He was the one that ruled the fire as an accident.”

Derek narrowed his gaze to the front door with the focus of a laser. She patted him on the shoulder once, trying to give him both reassurance and also the tell him to let her handle this at the same time. Derek showed no indication of receiving the message.

(Then again, Derek was never very good at following other people’s leads. It wasn’t that he was a bossy kid; just that he always thought his way was best. And Heaven forbid you try to convince him of it otherwise.

Laura would’ve been happy to see a bit of that old Derek back if it hadn’t been for this particularly horrible incident.)

She rang the doorbell. And waited. Outwardly, there were no signs of life coming from within the house. But Laura barely had to strain her hearing to catch the faint beat of a heart and the soft snores of a man with breathing problems—maybe allergies—in the room toward the back of the home.

“He’s asleep.”

Derek rolled his eyes at her.

They waited.

She pressed the doorbell for a second time.

The heartbeat spiked. She heard the sounds of the man being roused from slumber. She waited with arms crossed for the man to approach and open the door.

Finally, the door a crack, chain still latched to bar them (ineffectively) from barging in. Laura uncrossed her arms and attempted to look as sociable as possible. Derek was a lost cause.

“Can I help you?” the man asked.

Laura snorted. Derek shot her a strange, questioning look, but she shrugged him off. She’d explain the repetitive nature of the universe to him later. For now, it amused her to think of all these humans falling over themselves to offer their assistance.

“Mr. Myers,” she ventured.

He gave a tentative “Yes.”

Laura nodded to herself. “Six years ago you investigated my family’s insurance claim. A house fire. Nine people died.”

She didn’t even need to hear his heart skip a beat to know her statement had an effect. He paled to a sickly white. “I don’t—“

“You concluded it was an accident,” she continued, right over his protest. Beside her, Derek shifted uneasily.

Mr. Myers flinched. “It—“

Laura bit down a sigh. “If you have any information. Anything at all that you want to…” She hesitated, trying to gauge his reaction. “Get off your chest?”

She wasn’t sure what this Mr. Myers would do. She prepared herself to block the door open, if it came to that, and maybe force her way in. But he just shrank in on himself and sighed heavily, back bowed with invisible weight, and reached up to undo the chain. The door only closed enough to get the rudimentary security unlatched. He opened it wide, after. “Come in.”

Laura glanced at Derek and shrugged. He followed her lead.

The place had the look and smell of a long-time bachelor. The furniture was worn to the point of being uncomfortable and eclectic in its selection. Old coffee mugs lined the little table next to the recliner in front of the television—no doubt where he spent most of his time. (He had stale pizza and even staler beer sometime so late last night it was probably early morning, and more than just coffee sat encrusted in the bottom of those mugs.)

Laura didn’t really know what she was expecting, but this man certainly wasn’t it.

“Look,” he started, “I know what the report said. I don’t know what you know, or what you remember. But—“ he picked up a discarded coffee mug, perhaps thinking there was still something drinkable left inside, before putting it back down again. “I may have left some things out of the report.”

“Left some things out?” Laura protested. “You said it was an accident.”

Myers hung his head. “I know. I did. I—“

“Why?”

The man’s heart was spiking and skipping beats with every breath. Laura half-thought Myers was going to have a heart attack, he was so stressed. But it was clear he was hiding something, and Laura wanted very much to know what. She clenched her hands on her thighs, and told herself to wait for Myers.

“I had a problem with, well,” he cut himself off. “Someone found out. Left an envelope of pictures on my front step, with a note inside saying they could make it all go away if I just do one thing for them.” He signed heavily. Laura exchanged a look with Derek, who was staring at Myers with wide, disbelieving eyes. The man continued, “A few days later, the fire happened, and I got another note that said if I reported it an accident, all my troubles would just… disappear. I thought, why not? People died, so the police would conduct their own investigation. What was the harm on fudging the insurance forms? You got the money anyway.”

He sat, silently for a moment. Laura thought he was done, and was prepared to berate him for his choices when he spoke again, quietly under his breath. “I couldn’t have known that the evidence would be washed away before the arson investigator could come up from Sacramento. I didn’t know.”

Talk done, Myers slumped in his chair. He tapped his hand nervously on the armrest. Laura’s mind was reeling with the information. The blackmail, the fraud, the evidence—she didn’t really know where to start, beyond yelling at the man in frustration and sorrow. Before she could think of something, Derek asked, “Evidence? What evidence?”

Myers shook his head. “It was six years ago, I can’t—“

“Anything. Just a detail.” Laura refused to think of it as begging. It was more like forceful asking. (She was a wolf. She didn’t beg for _humans._ )

Myers gave her a sad look. “I’m sorry. All I remember is seeing traces of chemicals at the ignition site. Something that would have made it go up hot and fast. Way more potent than gasoline or propane.” He sighed, and dragged a hand over his balding head. “I thought it was odd, but I figured the other investigator would make more sense of it.”

“So you just left it?” Laura growled. “Figured it was someone else’s problem?” She wanted to hit the man, or strangle him. This wasn’t a _problem,_ this was her _family_. Her mom, her dad. Her brother and little sister. Her cousins and aunt. She ground her teeth and tried not to seethe at the man.

“Look, it was small—really easy to miss. And _yes_ , I did think someone else would handle it.” He turned away, staring pensively out the window. “And I had other things to worry about.”

“I lost my entire _family_.” Laura exploded. “ _We_ lost everything, and you thought _your_ problems were more important? I—“

Derek leaned over and put a hand on her arm. “Laura.”

Myers turned back to the pair. “I’ve told you all I know.” He stood. “Now, I’m sorry. But that’s it. Please leave.”

“But—“

“Please.”

Derek pulled her up by the arm. “Come on, sis,” he murmured. She allowed herself to be dragged up.

As they left the house, Myers said, one last time, “I am sorry.”

They didn’t look back.

 

Laura was at a loss. Garrison Myers had provided a wealth of information, but nothing concrete. They didn’t even know _which_ chemicals were used—just that they had been. Halfway back to the motel, Laura changed directions and headed to the library, hoping to research there and dig up something marginally more useful.

The library had not changed in the time Laura and Derek were in New York. They still had the same cheesy posters proclaiming “Reading is Fun!” and “Imagination is Outta This World!” that hung on the walls at ‘hip’ angles. Laura was pretty sure the ancient old woman glaring at them from behind the circulation desk was the same librarian from when she and Derek were kids.

She made a beeline towards the computers while Derek followed more sedately behind. She caught him eyeing the display of bestsellers as she loaded up the internet browser. “You need a library card to actually check anything out,” she reminded him.

He edged away from the stand and went to mope against the magazine racks. Great. Now she felt like a total bitch.

Swallowing a frustrated growl, she told herself that she’d get Derek an entire stack of bestsellers just as soon as she figured out who set fire to their family.

Her desire to howl only grew as she found it was difficult to find any sort of useful information from search engines. (Or maybe, her mind supplied unkindly, she just didn’t know how to _use_ them properly. It had been, what? Six months since she had last used a computer?

Laura was starting to feel very out of her depth.)

Searches on chemical accelerants gave interesting results (when the site wasn’t blocked because of “adult material”), but nothing that really said “if you want to murder a family of werewolves, use this!” This thermite stuff seemed promising, but went up so quickly that it probably would have trapped the arsonist inside the house along with everyone else.

She switched her focus to chemists in Beacon Hills instead.

And _that_ was a surprising list. Half of them came from the high school—apparently there was a chemistry club with budding scientists and anarchists alike. The chemistry and physics teacher apparently had a PhD in chemistry. (She remembered Professor Harris from her high school days. He was relatively new when she took his class, and she remembered thinking he was a real jackass.)

There was also a man who had won an award once for some research or another, stating he was a retired chemist, ‘living in Beacon Hills, along with his wife and three dogs.’

And there was a compounding chemist. It took Laura three minutes of link-clicking to learn that it was a type of pharmacist.

Huh. Who knew?

She scribbled what she could on a notepad nearby. She looked up to flag Derek down when she realized he was no longer where she left him. She stood up, and took in a deep breath of the place, disguising it as a yawn.

She pinpointed his scent several yards away, a forest of bookshelves in between them.

At any given time, nearly half the human population smells vaguely ill. Usually it was allergies, or something they ate. Sometimes it was a cold making the rounds. Or something more insidious, like the flu or pneumonia. More often it was small hurts—easy-to-ignore aches and pains, especially in the shoulders and back, thanks to the humans’ propensity for sedentary lifestyles. (Laura would rather ache on her feet than be strapped to a chair, thank you very much.)

Despite all of this, it was actually relatively rare for Laura to sniff out someone who was truly _hurt_. Someone so actively in pain, their hormones muddled the air with the sharp stink of quiet desperation and the underlying tones of congealing blood.

Of course, this is where she found her brother.

He sat next to a tall, lanky kid, maybe sixteen tops, with a mop of blonde curls and cheekbones any model would be jealous of. He sat with a book in his lap, hunched over slightly. Even while stationary, it was obvious he was favoring his ribs on his left side. One leg stretched in front of him, less a careless sprawl and more like the joint was bothering him.

Derek whined softly at her approach. The kid barely flinched, but Laura caught the movement all the same. She stepped forward slowly and deliberately.

“Hey, Derek. Making friends?”

The kid jumped and looked up at her. Derek calmly met her eyes and shrugged. It was clear, though, that his sitting by this kid was no accident. He closed his book. “Find something?”

“Couple of things.” To any other person, they could have been talking about library books.

Derek stood up, nodding. He patted the kid on the shoulder as he passed. The kid looked back at him with wide eyes, darting glances back and forth at Laura before lighting back on Derek. He watched as they turned and walked away, out of the library.

“What was that about?” Laura questioned when they got back to the car.

Derek shrugged. “He smelled hurt.”

She raised an eyebrow at that, but he didn’t elaborate. Instead, he asked, “What next?” easing into his seat and doing the seatbelt.

Laura tapped the steering wheel thoughtfully. “I dunno. I was thinking ice cream.”

Derek may have been facing his window, but she caught his grin in the reflection all the same.

 

It was the full moon and Laura still hadn’t made any more progress on the chemist angle. She had names, sure, but beyond stalking them at their homes and residences and demanding their whereabouts the day of the fire, she really didn’t have much to go on. (And storming Garrison Myers’ place had been stupid in hindsight. Laura wasn’t a cop. If the man hadn’t been so guilt-stricken, he could have easily called the cops and had Laura arrested for being a nuisance or something.)

(Okay, maybe she didn’t know much about police procedure other than to avoid being in it.)

Still, though, the cautious approach was bearing no fruit, and it only ramped her frustrations further, now that the moon rose full over the horizon.

“I need to go out or I’m going to explode,” she told Derek.

Derek was doing push-ups (again). “For a run?” he asked.

“A hunt, maybe.” She stared at the moon, already out despite the sun having not set yet. Summer months were strange. “I’m feeling like squirrel. Or something bigger.”

“Not rabbit?” Derek smirked at her. He got up off the floor with a little hop. She rolled her eyes at him and glared.

They drove up to the Preserve and poked around the woods a bit, waiting for it to get fully dark before shedding their civilized skins and racing into the trees.

Like last time, she hid her keys instead of trying to take them with her.

Unlike last time, she hid her clothes as well.

With the moon’s bright glow bathing everything ethereally white, she reached inside the part of herself that howled and hungered and ached for a life less trapped in the dressings of humanity, and _pulled_. The change came over her smoothly, like it always did. More smoothly now that she was Alpha, with the power and responsibility and pack bonds (small as they were) to guide and anchor her. She fell to her hands when the bones of her legs shifted enough to no longer fully support her weight—hands changing into paws before they even hit dirt. The fur came easily in a long, smooth wave. Her face elongated to a muzzle, her ears to triangular points on top her head.

She barked and wagged her tail, transformation complete.

Derek shook his head, mouth full of teeth and eyes glowing as he said, “You’re ridiculous.”

She bounded off into the woods. Derek ran after her, dodging the trees and swinging from their branches to keep up. He tackled her from behind, arms wrapping around her torso, and they rolled over.

They played for a while, snapping and barking at each other. Laura supposed that in a normal pack the wolves would be more respectful of their Alpha, but it was just her and Derek, and Laura didn’t really mind it when he managed to pin her on her back and shove leaves in her snout. She sneezed and nipped at his hand, and he laughed, backing off and darting away.

Dignified, they were not.

Laura caught wind of the squirrel first. She stood still, all previous motion coming to a halt as she centered her focus on the creature maybe a couple of hundred yards to their side. Derek crouched, sensing and anticipating her movement. The squirrel hadn’t noticed them yet, and the entire forest tensed, waiting for their chase.

Laura leapt, low and lean through the underbrush. It sensed her coming, and darted away. She made chase, and when it bounded to the left, she jumped. She landed hard on the squirrel, swooping it up in her jaws. She bit through its spine in one solid crunch. It died swiftly. She trotted back to Derek, tail high and wagging in the air, squirrel hanging from her jaws.

She very magnanimously shared her meal with him, and he picked at its bones delicately with his claws. Her tongue lolled out in a happy, wolfish grin.

She was busy tossing a scrap of squirrel fur in the air when she smelled it. She let the remains plop to the ground as she swiveled her head to the source. Derek caught it too, going abnormally still next to her.

Humans.

And wolfsbane.

They were coming right towards them.

Derek growled low under his breath, but Laura shushed him with a snap of her teeth. She fell into a dead run, Derek following right behind her. If she could just get to the car, they could be back at their motel before the hunters even picked up their trail.

They only made it about a hundred yards before a pair of hunters appeared right in front of them, crashing through the underbrush armed with crossbows. Laura skidded to a stop, paws sliding against the leaves. More hunters approached them from behind. She spun to face them.

Derek had shifted back into his human veneer, but Laura didn’t feel much like facing down hunters in the nude, so she remained fully furred. The one in the lead approached them cautiously. They all had crossbows, bolts dipped in wolfsbane (the sharp pungent stench of the stuff scratching wetly at her nostrils) and were decked out in paramilitary gear—belt pouches and knives strapped to their persons. They looked ready to sneak behind enemy lines. The one in front, however, had the lazy confidence of long-time veteran. Laura mentally pegged him as the leader.

“Kind of late to be strolling through the woods,” the man commented drily. Laura glanced up at Derek. She’d have to rely on him to be her voice throughout this exchange.

“Some of us have later schedules than others,” Derek responded.

Laura rolled her eyes. This was going to go well.

“What are you doing out here?” the man asked, shouldering his crossbow. The tip still faced toward the ground but Laura had a feeling it wouldn’t take much for the hunter to aim it at them. She nudged Derek with her shoulder. He just bumped her back.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Derek returned. “Especially seeing as you’re armed with medieval weaponry.”

One of the hunters behind the leader shifted uneasily, bracing his own crossbow against his side like he might at any moment shoot them from the hip. Laura decided that if anything were to go south, it’d be because of that one. She kept an eye on him.

The lead hunter continued blithely, either oblivious or apathetic to his man on the verge of starting an undue bloodbath behind him. “Heard there were,” he paused dramatically, like a community theater villain (Laura would roll her eyes, but she was busy staring down Mr. Trigger Finger), “mountain lions in the area, attacking deer and other animals. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, son?”

On a good day, Derek was about thirty seconds away from tearing someone’s throat out with his teeth. Later, Laura would be proud of him for lasting this long. “We’re not doing anything wrong,” he snapped. He waved a hand (unclawed, Laura noticed) at the trio. “You’re the ones with the weapons, harassing _us_.”

The one in the back piped up, “Chris, we came out here to put down a wolf, so let’s—“

The leader—Chris—waved him off. The man behind him shut up. “No, he’s right,” he said carefully, more to his crew than to Laura and Derek. “They haven’t done anything _outwardly_ wrong, and we were the ones that approached them.” He took a step back from them, signaling to his men that they would be leaving. “Continue to keep yourselves out of trouble, you two. I heard these woods can get dangerous.”

With that last, overly theatrical parting shot, he backed up and walked away, not showing his back until he was several yards away from Laura and Derek.

When they were gone completely from their sight, Derek looked down at Laura, eyebrow raised in question. Laura yipped her agreement. Yeah, that was fucking strange.

 

When Laura was fourteen, she decided she wanted to run on the high school track team. She hadn’t thought much beyond that she liked running, and was good at it. Her parents tried to talk her out of it, saying it wasn’t a good idea, it was too risky, someone was bound to find out, you don’t want hunters to start looking into the family, do you? But Laura thought it’d be fun and she was confident in her ability not to get caught, so she signed up for it anyway.

And spent the entire year trying to pretend to be _slow_.

Perhaps she didn’t really plan it all out as well as she thought she did. (But she got good at pretending to be mediocre, and she _did_ have fun, so it was worth it in the end. She even allowed herself to win half the events her senior year, figuring that would’ve been an attainable accomplishment if she had been strictly human.)

Still, at twenty-three, she was thinking that perhaps she never quite learned her lesson with the whole track team thing. She had originally thought that she’d get to Beacon Hills, figure out what was up with the article clipping she had received, and maybe uncover who it was that set fire to her family and killed everyone. True, she had been murky on the details when she was planning this, but she thought they’d just fall into place when she got to California.

Now, though, it had been almost a month, and she was still no farther than she had been during their first full moon on the West Coast. (No farther, apart from the small run in she had with Chris Argent at the grocery store—the man who had accosted them in the woods the night of the full moon. When she learned his name, she panicked in the cereal aisle thinking that the Argents, legendary werewolf hunters, were gunning for her and Derek. Even though they had no reason to. Not really. The Argents supposedly had a code or something, and she had to remind herself that they were way better than some Hunters she heard tales of.

Even so, she bought herself the chocolate cereal, because damn it she needed it after that.)

And since it _had_ been a month, Laura was now seriously re-evaluating her plan. Their money wouldn’t last forever, and their savings was dwindling by the day. Also, Laura was getting tired of the motel room.

So she bought a paper for the classifieds, and spread the sheets out over her claimed bed, marker in her mouth. Derek looked over at her curiously.

“I think we need to get jobs,” she told him. She drew a big X over the accounting and CPA section.

Derek raised an eyebrow at her. “Just how long are you planning on staying here?”

Laura lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I thought, you know, after this, that we would stay.”

“What about New York?” he asked, pacing to the other side of the room.

“What _about_ New York?” She returned to her paper, circling something about a secret shopper opportunity, whatever that was. “There was nothing really for me there.”

“What about your job? Your friends,” Derek tried. She looked up at him, her turn to raise an eyebrow questioningly.

“I worked shitty hours as a waitress. And I didn’t _have_ friends.”

Derek winced.

She put down her pen and really looked at him. “Derek, I just,” she sighed heavily. It had been on her mind a while, it really had been, but that didn’t make it any easier to put into words. “I’m just tired of running. I want to go home.”

“And maybe I want to go back to New York.”

“Why?” Laura scoffed.

Derek scowled at her. “What about my friends, Laura? What about my life?”

Laura had her mouth open before she could even get a grasp at what she was saying. “What friends?”

Derek’s face went cold in a way Laura rarely ever saw. “Fine.” He turned and grabbed his jacket, and before Laura knew it, he was stomping out the door.

“Derek!” She tried calling after him, but he didn’t return. She scrambled off the bed and flung open the door, but Derek was sprinting across the parking lot.

She considered following him, but thought better of it. What she said had been cold. Derek had every right to storm off on her like that. If she gave him time, he would cool down and come back on his own.

She hoped.

 

It was a tense afternoon and a worse evening after Derek had left the motel room. He came back after she had finally gone to bed. Another full moon was drawing near—beginning of next week, in fact, and this time it was leaving her listless and apathetic, rather than bursting with unspent energy.

Or maybe, it was just this thing with Derek that had her so worn down.

He snuck back into the room, tip-toeing in, but she was aware of him all the same. Snuffling into her pillows, she rolled over to face him. “D’rek?”

He put something on her nightstand. She squinted, bleary-eyed at it. She sat up and stared at it once she realized what it was.

A rabbit. A toy rabbit—a stuffed one. Not much bigger than the palm of her hand.

Derek sat down on the edge of her bed. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “We can stay if you want.”

She grabbed the rabbit. She tweaked its little arms. “Shit, Derek,” she said after a moment. “I wasn’t—if you want to go back to New York… Your friends. I didn’t—“ It seemed like all she was doing lately was digging herself deeper and deeper into holes.

Derek put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, Lars,” he said softly. “We both know I don’t have any friends.”

She cracked a smile. “Not with that frown at any rate,” she joked. Or tried to, but it came off as a bit flat in her ears.

But Derek took it well all the same. “You mean this frown?” He glared exaggeratedly at her, brow furrowed so deeply they nearly swallowed his eyes.

She laughed, a weak little chuckle. She bounced the toy in her hand. “Thanks for the rabbit.”

Derek’s face softened. “I saw it at the store and I—“ he trailed off. Shaking his head, he finished, “No problem, sis.”

Laura stared at the little button face of the toy for a moment. Derek made no move to get up off her bed. She nudged him with her shoulder. “Can you stay here tonight? I mean…” She shrugged.

Derek nodded. He kicked off his shoes and once they were off, turned to wrap his arms around Laura’s shoulders. They lay down together, kicking and squirming until they were both under the sheet (the comforter had taken a nose dive to the floor much earlier in the night—Laura didn’t like heavy blankets at _any_ time of year, never mind summer). She rolled until her head was resting on his shoulder, arm draped around his chest, still clutching the rabbit. He had one arm around her and the other ended up tangled in her hair.

“Thanks,” she whispered against the fabric of his shirt.

He leaned in and kissed her forehead, dropping his head back to the pillow without another word.

Laura laid with her eyes closed for a moment before chuckling softly to herself. Derek stirred and made and inquisitive noise.

“Nothing,” Laura answered. “Just, if you try to kiss me, I’m going to make you eat this rabbit.”

Derek laughed and shoved her face into his armpit.

 

When Laura was eight, she found a rabbit in the woods. Whether it was a fluke, or some stroke of luck (or a complete lack of self-preservation on the rabbit’s part), it wasn’t scared of her. She walked right up to it, picked it up, and brought it home. Her mother waited on the porch, curious as to what her daughter was doing.

Laura brought the rabbit right up to her mother, cradling its soft fur in her lanky, pre-pubescent arms, and asked, “Can I keep him?” (Technically it was a her, but Laura hadn’t quite figured out to check animals for their gender yet.)

Her mother said, “No.”

Laura pouted. “Why not?”

“Because,” he mother answered with a laugh, hand cradling her swollen belly (Cora hadn’t even been _born_ yet, and that thought made Laura feel old). “We are _wolves_ , sweetheart. We do not keep rabbits; we _eat_ them.”

Laura smashed her face into the rabbit’s fur. It put up with her, barely squirming, ears twitching mildly under her nose. It smelled like the forest floor on a sunny spring day. “But I like him.”

“No Laura.”

“But—“

“I said no.”

In the end, no amount of crying or begging would convince her mother otherwise. She had made Laura go out to the tree-line and let the rabbit go, where it scampered off into the underbrush. When Laura, tired of crying and realizing she didn’t have much of an audience for her tears anyway, walked back to the house to get cleaned up, her baby brothers, Derek and Thomas, toddled up to her.

“S’okay Laura,” Thomas said, patting her on her hip. “This is for you.”

Derek silently handed her a picture. (They were always like that: finishing each other’s sentences, explaining each other’s actions. No wonder everyone thought they were twins).

It was a rabbit. Or, a rabbit-shaped thing, drawn in purple crayon. Still, it was recognizable to Laura’s young eyes.

“Momma will let you keep this one,” Derek said softly. Thomas grinned at her brightly.

She hung the picture over her bed. A rabbit of her own.

Over the years, Derek and Thomas gave Laura more rabbits—photos, toys, books about them. Their parents must have known, Laura catching her mother rolling her eyes at them on more than one occasion. But she never stopped them.

Laura decorated her entire room with presents from her brothers. When she got to high school, it was just an accepted fact: Laura liked rabbits. No one bothered Derek when he decided his eighth grade art project would be a portrait of the creatures, nor did they bother Thomas when he did his science report on rabbit behavior and habitat. Even _their_ friends knew that eventually their projects would wind up in their sister’s room, and, well…

Laura just liked rabbits.

The toy that Derek got her that night sat on the dash of the Camaro, and stared at her as they drove into town. It was the only rabbit she owned now, and she liked it.

They were supposed to be looking for apartments for rent and help wanted signs when she slowed, just barely, in front of the vet’s office. Beside her, Derek sighed loudly.

“Just go in.”

She shot him a look. “Why?”

“Because this is the third time you’ve nearly stopped in front of the building,” Derek replied. “Just go in and talk to the guy, if it’s bothering you.”

“I’m not. It’s,” Laura huffed. “Fine.”

But she turned into the parking lot anyway. She pulled into a spot next to a beat-up blue Jeep. She slammed the door of the Camaro shut while Derek shuffled with his hands in his pockets, keeping pace with her.

The bell chimed above them as they walked into the lobby for the second time that summer. The difference was night and day. The smells of the clinic were the same (including that sharp, niggling scent that got stuck in Laura’s nose last time), along with the sounds of the animals under Dr. Deaton’s care—the hurt whimpers and the snores of sleeping cats and dogs. But whereas the last visit was quiet, comparatively, this time the building was filled with the ambient sound of two boys discussing very loudly and very emphatically the effects animals would have on beloved superheroes.

“But if Batman had a dog, maybe he wouldn’t be so broody all the time.”

“Batman is _supposed_ to brood. Besides, he doesn’t need a dog, he has _bats_.”

Derek raised an eyebrow. Laura was trying hard not to laugh.

“I’m surprised you haven’t left,” Deaton’s voice said from the back of the building. “You insist that you don’t work here, yet here you are.”

“I’m Scott’s ride, and I’m bored.”

Laura very clearly heard Deaton’s long-suffering sigh. Nice to know someone could get under that man’s skin, even if it was a nerdy teenager. She tracked the sound of the vet’s footsteps as they wound their way to where she and Derek stood in the lobby. Dr. Deaton emerged a moment later, and looked genuinely surprised for about half a second before relaxing his features into a carefully blank mask.

“Laura. Derek. How good to see you two again.” He opened the little wooden gate that separated the public from the main rooms of the clinic. “What can I help you with today?”

Laura ran a hand through her hair. “Just a few questions.” She followed Deaton to the back room, the same one he had led them to before, with the shiny, steel examination table as the focal point. Derek lounged casually against the wall, actually inside the room this time, as opposed to blocking the doorway.

Before she could say anything else, Deaton gave her a very bland smile. “My assistant and his friend are here today, so please excuse the mess.” He raised his eyebrows at her.

Ah. Okay. Ix-nay on the werewolf talk. She nodded her comprehension. “I was wondering if you knew about any, um…” she paused, unsure of how much she should say with others’ ears in possible hearing distance. “People who know about chemicals? Who were in Beacon Hills six years ago?” She gave him a look.

“Chemicals?” Deaton repeated, looking something less than his usual blankness.

Laura nodded. “We’re sure.”

He seemed to get her message. “Well then,” he muttered to himself. He clasped his hands together in front of him. “What kind of—“

He was interrupted by the arrival of a dark-haired boy sporting bright yellow cleaning gloves. He seemed surprised to see them standing around the examination table. “Um,” he hedged nervously, darting to the side cabinet. “Ran out of paper towels.” He grabbed two rolls out of what Laura saw as the supply locker before trying to slink away. Deaton stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Scott, this is Laura and Derek Hale,” Deaton said. “They’re old friends of mine. I’d like for you to let me know whenever they drop by.” To Laura, he nodded at the boy. “This is Scott, my assistant.”

Scott broke into a wide, dimpled grin. “Nice to meet you!”

She raised a hand in greeting, and another boy came skidding into the room through the same door Scott had used. “Scott!” the newcomer called. “I ran out of cat food and now they’re glaring at me.”

Deaton rolled his eyes and sighed. “And this is Scott’s friend, Stiles. Who doesn’t actually work here.”

Stiles, who looked like he just now noticed Laura and Derek in the room, stopped completely. Even his heart stuttered. “Laura?”

Laura blinked. “Yes?” She stared at the kid, searching his face. He was cute, in that large, doe-eyed sort of way. He _did_ look familiar.

It was Derek that beat her to it. “Genim?” he asked, still standing behind her. She turned swiftly to look at him. He looked back at the kid with something akin to wonder or surprise on his face. She looked back at Stiles.

The kid _could_ have been Genim. A Genim six years older, grown lanky and stretched out, face a bit sharper and away from the soft baby cheeks he used to sport.

Stiles blushed. “Uh, yeah. I’m called Stiles now,” he said. “You know. Because my first name sucks.”

“It doesn’t suck,” Laura said, falling into a familiar argument she remembered having with the kid back when she babysat him. “It’s very distinguished.”

Genim—Stiles—rubbed the back of his head. “No, it’s not.”

Scott looked at his friend like Stiles had grown another head. “Wait, you _know_ them?”

Stiles shrugged. “Laura used to babysit me.”

Deaton cleared his throat from behind the four of them. “Perhaps we can get back to our conversation?” He patted Scott on the shoulder, and gestured to the open door.

Stiles turned to Scott. “Yeah, no really, dude. If I don’t feed the cats soon, I think they’re going to turn on me.”

Scott darted away from Deaton’s hold on him to lead his friend out of the room. It grew profoundly silent after the boys left the room.

“You’d think I was running a youth hostel and not an animal clinic,” Deaton muttered.

Laura tried very hard not to grin at the vet’s exasperation. Deaton continued blithely on. “Chemicals, you said?”

Nodding, she answered. “Yes. Something more potent than gasoline. Like, really potent.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what exactly. But I’m guessing something mixed especially for—you know.”

Deaton tapped his chin. Like last time, he turned his back on them and fiddled with the top shelves of the side cabinet. This time Laura managed to catch a glimpse of several rows of small glass jars. What the hell kind of medicine did this “vet” stock?

His back still towards them, he finally said, “I may know of a few people.”

Laura scoffed. “Really?”

The vet hummed in thought. “People who have the skills and knowledge to do it, anyway.” Finally turned away from his bottles, he faced them once more. “The question is, why would any of them want to?”

“Maybe they were coerced,” Derek said.

Deaton went utterly blank. Laura looked back and forth between the two. It _was_ a good thought. Garrison Myers had been blackmailed into defrauding the initial investigation—most likely by the arsonist. Who’s to say that the arsonist didn’t force the information they had needed to set the fire from someone else?

“There are only two people I can think of that not only have the knowledge necessary to create a chemical fire, but were also in Beacon Hills six years ago,” Deaton continued. “Robert Landers and Adrian Harris .”

The first name meant nothing to Laura, but the second was familiar.

Derek beat her to it, though. “The teacher?” Laura pivoted to look at him, and Derek added. “High school chemistry. The jackass.”

Laura nodded. She remembered Adrian Harris now—they both took his science classes in high school. But Laura had only known him at school as her teacher. Who really knows their teachers in high school?

Deaton continued. “He has a doctorate in chemistry. Judging by some of the experiments and chemicals he has stocked in his own classroom, I’d say he probably has the knowledge necessary to do something… atrocious.”

Laura paused. She squinted at Deaton, trying to get a read on the man who was proving to be notoriously unreadable.

His heartbeat had spiked.

“Why would a chemistry teacher want to set a student's home on fire?” Derek asked from right behind Laura.

That’s right, she reminded herself. Derek had been taking Professor Harris’s chemistry class when the fire happened. It would have been one of his own students, then, if it had been indeed Adrian Harris.

Derek pushed himself away from the wall to hover behind his sister. She reached back and, hidden by the edge of the table, brushed her hand against his thigh. He tangled his fingers with hers briefly before pulling away.

In response to Derek’s question, Deaton shrugged. “Perhaps he didn’t have a reason. But I do know that Adrian Harris had quite the drinking problem a few years back.”

Laura quirked an eyebrow. Maybe someone talked Harris into mixing chemicals to start a fire while he was drunk, but she found it unlikely the man would follow through when he sobered up. Especially since it was on one of his own student’s houses. She shook her head.

“And the other one?” Laura asked. She was suddenly very aware of the noise the two boys—Scott and Stiles—produced on the other side of the building. She mentally urged them to stay there and give her time to pull more information out of Deaton.

“Robert Landers is a retired Air Force Colonel who’s been in Beacon Hills for about ten years. He worked with hazardous materials. He even consulted with the sheriff’s office after 9/11 on anti-terrorism strategies. If I remember correctly, he had quite the presentation on chemical warfare.”

Laura kept an ear not just on the man’s words, but on his heart as well. It was steady, just as calm as his face as he spilled detail after detail. But the smell from last time was building, that itchy, floral scent that crawled up her nose and refused to leave. It was blocking her from smelling anything of note in the room. She could tell it was affecting Derek as well, judging by his sniffing like a human with a cold.

Then, Deaton opened his mouth, and Laura’s own heart nearly stopped. “Robert Landers also knows the Argents.” She caught Derek’s stifled gasp over the roaring in her ears. She risked a glance at her brother.

He had gone utterly pale.

Laura turned stiffly back to Deaton. “Do you think--?” she started, but didn’t know how to finish the question. Did he think this Landers would have done it? Did do it? Had any reason to? Laura may have been in high school at the time, but she knew some of her family’s dealings. And they were nothing that would have attracted the attentions of the Argents.

“Honestly?” Deaton answered. “I don’t know. He seems like a good man, but,” he looked at Laura and Derek, eyeing them each for a moment, “I don’t know him very well.” He shrugged. “No pets.”

A very, very small part of Laura wanted to cry. She told that part to take a hike. The rest of her wanted to grow fur and burst out of the building like an avenging wolf, but she told that part to back off as well. She concentrated on her breathing.

Still unsettled by the turn of events, Laura laughed nervously. “And how do you know about all of them?” Derek bumped against her shoulder, but she continued on. “I didn’t know people came to the town vet to gossip.”

Deaton smirked. “Maybe not, but all the town gossips own dogs.”

Laura blinked at the man, completely floored. Well, she certainly hadn’t thought about _that_. Derek moved to stand next to her. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I think we probably ought to go,” he said, facing the vet, but she knew it was directed at her.

She nodded, agreeing. “Yeah. We’ve taken up enough of your time.” She edged away from the table, back towards the door. “Thank you,” she added in afterthought.

“Any time,” Deaton called out after them. 

They saw themselves out.

 

Outside, the dark-haired boy—Scott, Laura reminded herself—had a garden hose in his hand and was spraying water over Genim—Stiles, she reminded herself. The other boy was already soaked, but underneath the water she caught a plethora of animal smells and a strong whiff of blood.

“What happened to you?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“Accident,” Stiles bit out.

“He tripped into some cats,” Scott supplied helpfully.

Behind her, Derek snorted in amusement.

“You tripped. Into some cats,” Laura repeated, asking (not begging, she told herself) for clarity.

Stiles looked like a soggy cat himself, buzzed hair plastered to his head and expression so filled with disgust and anger he looked ready to scratch out the eyes of anyone who came near. No wonder Scott was hanging back, keeping a good three foot distance from him. “They started it.”

Laura couldn’t help it. She laughed. Stiles glared at her. Scott looked sullen and displeased. He tossed the hose down, still pouring water, and nudged his friend’s shoulder. “How come you know, like, everybody in this town, dude?”

Stiles beamed. “Dude. My dad’s the _sheriff,_ so I know _everybody_.” And that was answer enough for Scott, who nodded with a satisfied grin. Stiles turned his attention back to Laura and Derek. “My dad told me you guys were back in town. Where are you guys staying now?” He stopped, face shutting in on himself as he considered his choice of words. “I mean, not that. Um—“

Laura shook her head. She got it—she really did. “A motel.” She waved towards Derek. “We’re hunting for apartments, actually.”

Stiles’ face lit up, eyes growing brighter and mouth stretching into a smile. “Really? You’re moving back to Beacon Hills?”

Laura couldn’t help but return his grin with one of her own. “Looks like it.”

Derek grunted his agreement behind her. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he was _hiding_ behind her.

“That’s great!” Stiles continued. “We should, like, totally get together some time. Just, like, hang out, like we used to.” He stopped, trailing off. “Well, not _exactly_ like we used to. I don’t really like Power Rangers anymore. And I don’t really need a babysitter—“

Scott, behind him, had turned off the water and rolled the hose up and placed it neatly against the wall of the clinic. He patted his friend on the shoulder. Stiles grew quiet, smiling awkwardly at them.

He was adorable, Laura decided. Genim grew up well.

“Sure,” she offered. “Let’s do that.” She gave the two boys a wave and headed to the car. “It was good to see you again, Stiles,” she tried out his name. “And you, Scott.”

Derek hummed. The boys waved at them as they got into the car. Buckling her seat belt, she heard Stiles say, “Thanks for the save, dude. I was totally drowning there.”

Scott answered merrily. “Anytime.”

Laura grinned again, and started the car.

 

 


	3. Howl (drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beating heart)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two interrogations and a desperate fight for survival in the woods. Things are starting to spiral out of Laura's control.

The next day was the full moon and Laura still hadn’t gotten over how Derek had hidden behind her at the vet’s office. She was reasonably sure it had very little to do with the vet or Scott.

“So, Genim. That was a nice surprise,” Laura started when Derek was safely trapped in the Camaro on their way to the woods.

Derek grunted in the seat next to her.

“He got tall,” Laura commented idly, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. She risked a glance at him. He was staring straight ahead, his jawline so sharp she was sure he was grinding his teeth.

Derek said nothing.

“Kinda good looking, too. In a lean, spastic sort of way,” she mused to herself, knowing her brother was left hanging onto every word. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as she doled out more virtues she had noticed. “A bit pale, but people are into that nowadays. Bet those big Bambi eyes of his get a lot of attention.”

Derek made a noise reminiscent of a dying goat.

She swallowed a laugh. He turned to look sharply at her anyway. She put on a fake look of surprise. “Why, Derek!” She gasped. “You don’t _like_ him or anything, do you?”

“I will murder you in your sleep,” he growled.

She allowed herself to laugh. “Promises, promises.”

 

When they pulled into what Laura was quickly dubbing ‘their’ spot at the edge of the Preserve, she felt mildly bad for teasing Derek. The guy didn’t get out much, and didn’t really date so much as bring random hookups to their apartment while Laura was out—she’d smell it for hours anyway but they both appreciated the illusion of privacy. He never out and out told her, but it was pretty easy to surmise his taste in partners. All of them had been men.

But none of them lasted more than the night, so she figured Derek was long due for some good-natured teasing from his big sister.

“Really, though, Der,” she said, pulling off clothes and bundling them into a tight ball to stash in the trunk. Derek was already shaking his way into his fangs and claws. “He was adorable. You could do worse.”

“He’s what? Sixteen?” Derek spat. “Yeah, I suppose I could do _worse_.”

“Sixteen’s just a number. He’ll grow out of it soon enough,” Laura said, bending over to shimmy her jeans down her legs. Straightening, she laughed. “Hey, get it? _Grow_ out of it?”

“Your puns are terrible.” Derek rolled his eyes.

She shook her hair out and started changing. Before she lost the ability to speak, she barked, “ _You’re_ terrible. Now start running.”

He flipped her off and sprinted into the trees. She chased after him, tail wagging happily.

 

The next morning, Laura dragged Derek out of bed to go hunt down this Robert Landers. He grumbled at her, but after she plied him with enough coffee, he followed readily enough. They were back in the car, Laura having once again looked up the man’s residential information out of the phonebook. “Do you have any idea what you’re going to say to this guy?” Derek asked.

Laura stared at the stoplight. “I was thinking about starting with ‘good morning.’”

“It’s a start,” Derek muttered.

Laura knew what he meant, though. She needed some sort of plan, even it was a shitty one. She had gotten lucky with Garrison Myers, and she knew herself well enough that having that kind of luck was a fluke. It wasn’t going to happen again. “What if I start with honesty?”

Derek snorted. “Sure. Just openly admit we think he helped murder out family. _That’ll_ go over well.”

“Not that,” Laura said sharply. “Just introduce ourselves. Say we’re back in town and…” she trailed off, uncertain. “I don’t know. Ask if he remembers anything peculiar that day.”

Derek was at least quiet while he let her suggestion sink in. The more Laura thought about it, the more she thought it could work. Yeah, maybe she was collecting information on the fire. Like, a memorial or something. People do weird things after tragedies. It wouldn’t be _that_ out of the ordinary.

“If he’s hidden it for six years,” Derek started, “it’ll probably be hard to get him to admit to anything.”

Laura nodded. “True. But, if he starts lying or getting anxious, we’ll know,” she added. “Besides, Deaton said that he _did_ consult with the sheriff’s office. I don’t think it’s too far out of left field to ask his opinion on the fire.”

The car was quiet for a moment. “Okay. That’s not a bad idea,” he said finally.

Laura shrugged. “I occasionally have good ideas.”

“ _Occasionally_.”

“More than _you,”_ she shot back.

Derek flipped her off. “Bite me.”

 

Robert Landers was almost exactly what she was expecting. At least physically. He was outside, placing sprinklers around his yard, dressed in beige cargo shorts and a bright teal polo shirt. He was tan and surprisingly fit for his age, and looked up curiously when Laura pulled up in front of his house. She got out of the car first, offering a little wave to the man. Derek followed her as she made her way up his front walk to greet him.

And that’s when Laura’s expectations fell flat. It was obvious after a few minutes of questioning about the day of the fire that Mr. Landers had absolutely nothing to do with it. He offered condolences, belated though they may have been, and what little information he remembered.

“Could’ve been an electrical malfunction,” he said, rubbing his buzz shorn hair. “But the site hadn’t been secured properly, and there were a lot of rainstorms that day. It was mostly guess work after that.”

In the end, Laura stiffly thanked him for his time, and walked back to the car. Derek hovered uncertainly behind her. “Goddamnit.” She slammed her fist against the door of her car—not enough to dent it, but enough to feel the sting of pain on her skin. It was a momentary thing. “Was he lying? Maybe he’s still hiding—“

Derek put a hand on her shoulder, easing her away from the door. “Maybe he just really doesn’t know anything.”

Laura took a deep breath. “I just really thought it was him.”

They were still for a long moment. Behind them, Mr. Landers went back to his yard work. Wind rustled the leaves of the trees lining the block, and distantly, a bird sang its morning praises. Laura rested her head against her hands for one shaky breath before straightening up once more. “Come on.” She opened the car door and climbed inside. Derek crossed to the other side of the vehicle.

“We have one more lead. Harris,” she said when Derek climbed into the car. She gunned the engine and pulled away from the curb. Beside her, Derek raised an eyebrow.

“You’re going to talk to him now?”

Laura shrugged. “No time like the present, right?”

Derek put a hand on her thigh. “You’re upset. Maybe—“

She shook her head. “No. I’ll feel better if I do something. I can’t just…” She nearly missed the stop sign, and brought the car to a jerky stop in front of it. “I can’t sit around anymore, just waiting.”

“Do you even know where he lives?” Derek asked. He gave her a dirty look, probably from the less than stellar driving. She steadfastly ignored it.

But, he did have a point. She had no idea where to find Harris at the moment. It probably wouldn’t be that hard of a thing to find—she seemed to have done well with the phonebook already.

She shrugged to herself. “We know where he works.”

Derek huffed out a laugh. “Fantastic. You’re going to stalk him at the school.”

“I’m not going to stalk him at the school.”

Although, silently to herself, she admitted that yes, yes she was.She drove through town, plan already formulating in her mind, while Derek laughed at her poorly concealed lie.

 

When Laura parked the Camaro in the parking lot of the high school, Derek rolled his eyes so hard that Laura thought they might actually fall out of the boy’s head. He didn’t say anything, though. He really didn’t need to.

The parking lot was empty save for a row of cars close to the building. It being late morning, it was obvious classes hadn’t started yet (or else they’d be overrun with teenagers), so Laura supposed the cars belonged to the teachers and other faculty, preparing for the upcoming school year.

She hoped one of the cars belonged to Harris.

After twenty minutes of quietly waiting, Derek could no longer keep his opinions to himself. “You call this ‘not stalking’?”

Laura peered out of the windshield. There was movement in the parking lot. Perhaps some of the teachers were coming back from lunch? “I’m waiting.”

“For _what_?”

Bingo. A tall, pasty-faced gentleman in a cheap suit climbed out of the blue Honda, and walked towards the entrance of the school. The man was just as pompous and rat-faced as she remembered in her high school chemistry class. “For him.”

Derek whipped his head around to stare out of the windshield. “What?”

Harris turned suddenly, and peered around the parking lot. Laura grabbed the sleeve of Derek’s shirt and hauled him down below the sight line of the dashboard, sliding down almost into the foot well of the seat herself. How did he know they were watching? She edged up cautiously, poking her head up above the steering wheel to see if the chemistry teacher was still looking at them.

He wasn’t, not exactly. But his posture suggested that he was unnerved by something. He quickly walked to the doors of the building, squeezing inside just behind a pair of female teachers.

“What is it?” Derek asked from his crouched position near the floor.

Slowly, she eased her way back onto her seat. Derek followed after a moment, still staring at her in confusion. She shook her head. “Nothing. He’s gone now.”

Derek glared at her. “Weren’t we here _for_ him? Why did we hide?”

She waved him off. “I have an idea. Don’t worry.”

Derek thunked his head against his seat. “Great.”

She ignored him.

Laura figured that she would talk to Harris in the safety of his own classroom. Following him home probably wouldn’t engender him to answer many of their questions (although, she did consider it). That, and Derek would _really_ judge her if she did that. She climbed out of the car.

“You’re just going to go in and talk to him?” Derek asked, following her out of the car.

Laura walked towards the building. “Yup.”

She heard him sigh behind her, but ignored him. They walked into the school together.

It had been years since she’d stepped foot into Beacon Hills High, but she found that they hadn’t done much changing in the time she’s been gone. The posters had been updated, and the flyers advertised different events in the bulletin boards, but other than that, there wasn’t much difference. Even the paint colors were the same.

She and Derek trotted down the hallways to the science labs. Once they reached the small hallway containing the specially built rooms, Laura realized that this was going to be easier than she had anticipated. No one else was around for several rooms spanning behind them. Only one person sat, heartbeat calm and restful, ahead of them. Laura nudged Derek, and he nodded.

She walked up to the door to the classroom and knocked. Inside, the oily voice of the teacher she remembered bid, slightly confused, “Come in.”

Laura opened the door and walked in. It was clear by the look in the man’s face that she and Derek were not at all what he was expecting. She sauntered up to his desk. Behind her, she heard Derek shut the door.

“Mr. Harris.”

He scowled. “It’s Professor Harris, actually.” He tapped his nameplate at the front of his desk with a pen. Laura glanced at it. It did, indeed, proclaim “Prof. Adrian Harris.”

She shrugged, and decided to dive right into it. “I was wondering if you knew anything about a house fire that happened six years ago.”

Even if she couldn’t keep tabs on the level of his heart beat or the cacophony of smells that came from different stress triggers, the unsubtle flinch was a dead giveaway that Harris was somehow involved. “What house fire?”

Derek snorted behind her. No doubt he was rolling his eyes at the man. Laura smiled amicably, knowing that if she appeared pleasant that Harris wouldn’t run. Well, probably. Maybe.

“The house fire that killed the Hale family.” She paused to let that sink in. “My family.”

“I, I—“ Harris sputtered, and Laura cut him off before he could work himself up more.

“Don’t lie to me. You’re sweating and fidgeting. You obviously know something, so just tell me.” Laura bit her lip. “Please.”

Adrian Harris actually met her eyes. They stared at each other for a long minute. Finally, he sighed heavily. “I wasn’t involved in the fire. Not directly.”

“I just want to know.”

His heartbeat calmed slightly from its near-frantic pace moments ago. He drummed his fingers on his desk as he spoke. “Six years ago I was at a bar. There was a woman.”

She waited for him to spill his story at his own pace. Derek was a solid presence behind her as the teacher slowly put his words together.

“She—we were drinking. A lot. I told her that I taught chemistry, and she started asking me questions.” He swallowed. “Silly questions at first. Then bigger ones. Like how to make an acid strong enough to melt through steel. Or an accelerant to mimic an electrical fire. How to make it look like an accident.”

Derek shifted behind her, jeans scraping across the desk as he fidgeted. Laura forced herself to remain perfectly still. “Then the fire happened.”

Harris slowly nodded. “Two weeks later.” He leaned up suddenly, searching Laura’s face. “I didn’t know. I couldn’t be sure if it was connected. It could have been a coincidence.”

She glared at him. “You know it wasn’t a coincidence.”

“No. I mean.” He flailed at his desk, looking so much like so much like a caged rat that Laura was surprised he didn’t sprout whiskers and a stringy tail. “It was six years ago.”

Laura planted her hands on Harris’ desk and leaned over it. She got right into Harris’ rat face. “My family _died._ Six years is nothing.” Softer, she leaned back and asked, “What about this woman?”

“I don’t know her name.”

Laura crossed her arms. “Then tell me what she looked like.”

Harris nodded, like this was a task he could accomplish. “She was blonde. Mid-twenties and good-looking. Very good-looking.”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “I’m going to need something else.”

Harris grabbed a notepad. “A necklace. She wore this pendant that had some sort of etching in it, like nothing I’ve seen before.” He drew on the paper a figure of a lop-sided wolf howling at a moon and star. He tore the page out and attempted to hand it to Laura. She looked pointedly at it.

“You should sign it.”

Harris’ hand flopped back down to his desk. “Excuse me?”

Laura shrugged. “It’d be nice if you signed it.”

Harris glared at her, but did as she asked. “There.” He threw the pen down. “That’s everything I know. Please leave.”

She grabbed the paper and carefully folded it. “Thank you,” she said. Derek stepped in front of her and opened the door. As she stepped through it, she turned back. “Nice to see you again, Professor Harris.”

He gave her an odd, unreadable look. She spun and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her. She stalked down the hallway after Derek.

That had gone surprisingly well.

 

It was all coming together. Laura was close—that cliché about tasting it had never felt so accurate. It hung around on her tongue, sharp and coppery. A lot like blood.

The only problem is that, despite the description of the culprit (the scumbag _bitch_ that murdered her whole _family_ ), Laura didn’t actually know who it _was._

No one yet fit the description.

“Fuck it all to hell, Derek,” she spat one night. “How am I supposed to find a young blond woman with a necklace from six years ago?”

Derek looked up from his idle doodling on the motel notepad. He looked like he was about to say something for half a second, but kept his mouth shut. Shrugging finally, he answered, “I have no idea.”

Laura fell back against her bed with an exaggerated growl. “Goddamnit.”

She was fully prepared to launch into a thorough bitch fest (complete with as many unsavory vulgarisms as she could muster up—and she could muster quite a few) when a long, drawn-out howl drifted through the air. It was quiet, from a good distance off, but it was obvious Derek caught it too, with the way he jerked up and oriented himself towards the sound like a groundhog. Laura did much the same, sitting up in bed and staring out the window.

“Holy shit.”

Derek looked at her wide-eyed. “That was—“

Laura scrambled off the bed. “Let’s go.”

Derek didn’t need telling twice. They sprinted to the Camaro, Laura just barely closing the motel door behind her, and tore towards the Preserve.

 

It suddenly hit Laura, as she walked with her brother in the dark forest, how glad she was she had Derek with her. If he hadn’t begged her to wait for him, she probably _would_ have barreled off to Beacon Hills without him. And would, therefore, be walking around the woods, alone, trying to sniff out whatever werewolf had decided to just up and waltz into the territory. _Their_ territory.

Not only that, but she would have been alone through all the hunting down their family’s killer, and that thought made something clench in the bottom of her stomach.

She brushed up against Derek in silently conveyed gratitude. He shot her a quick glance of concern. She shrugged, and continued forward.

They were utterly silent.

The howl did not come again, but they caught a familiar scent on the old, overgrown drive that would’ve eventually ended at the old house. Their old house. Laura breathed deep and looked at Derek.

His eyes were shocked and confused. Her face probably looked just the same. She hesitated, working though what it all meant.

Why would Uncle Peter be _here?_ In the woods? Especially since he was supposedly comatose?

Another smell sat underneath his, one that had the sharp smell of antiseptic and the strangely herbal hints of medicine. Like a hospital.

Holy shit. Shit _balls._

Laura stalked forward, tracking the scent deeper into the woods, eyes flashing red in her anger. She was more angry at herself, but her anger made her sharp, and she was going to use it. She should’ve seen this coming. She should have connected the dots earlier. If she hadn’t just _assumed_.

The newspaper clippings. The hospital scent. The spiral on the animals. All of it; it was Peter.

Somehow he had clawed his way out of his coma and called Laura and Derek home.

Derek was silent as death behind her, toeing carefully over the forest floor. It didn’t take long for them to track the scent to its final destination—a small clearing, bordered by trees on one side and a sharp incline on the other, raising more than ten feet in the air. The whole ground around them was filled with the soft dirt and piles of fallen leaves and debris of an old, dried out pond.

And in the center was a figure dressed, oddly enough, in a plain bathrobe and house slippers. He stood facing away from them. Laura took a hesitant step forward.

“Uncle Peter?” she whispered hoarsely. She fought an irrational urge to laugh. This really wasn’t how she envisioned this reunion going.

He turned slowly to face her, jaw falling open to reveal elongated fangs. A low growl emanated from his mouth, but his eyes remained glassy and flat.

She had barely any time to react when he lunged for her, claws and fangs first. He attacked viciously with no hesitation or remorse—she barely dodged his first leap. He caught her on his next swipe, low on her belly and raking across her hips. Pain bloomed bright across her midsection—his claws had raked in deep. She fell to a knee, and he went with her, going for her neck. She pierced his chest with her claws and tried to push him off of her, but he clung, doggedly determined to tear her throat out with his teeth. She screamed, panicked, when he managed to knock her over onto her back.

And then he was off of her. She coughed, feeling her stomach start to stitch itself back together. She levered herself up.

Derek and Peter were rolling on the ground, clawing and biting and tearing at each other—Peter making his breathless barking noise and Derek grunting under the effort to keep their uncle from eviscerating him.

Holy shit, Peter had gone feral.

She dove for the pair and managed to tackle Peter off of Derek and roll him underneath her. She grabbed his throat with one hand, wrenching his head back, and kneeled on one of his hands. The other she caught in her fist. Still, he struggled.

“Enough!” she roared, voice deep with authority and command. (Her mother used to sound like this, and Laura felt a moment of heartache at the similarity of it.)

Peter stopped for all of two seconds before rearing up and kicking her off of him. She swallowed a curse, landing hard on her ass as he gained his feet in front of her. His mouth was opened wide, saliva dripping down his chin and eyes blazing. He stepped towards her, claws raised.

She kicked him squarely in the chest, sending him flying across the clearing. He landed with a crash. She scrambled after him, but Derek was faster. He sat on Peter’s back and held him against the ground, practically laying on him to keep him pinned. The man grunted and howled underneath him. Derek looked back at Laura. “What do we--?” he started.

A particularly vicious twist from Peter (dear god, he must have torn something to move like that) sent Derek rolling off of him. Peter barked, a high mad noise, and slithered on his hands and knees after Derek. He fell on him, and sunk his claws so deep into Derek’s stomach that Laura couldn’t see the knuckles. Derek gasped wetly, digging his own claws into Peter’s shoulder to try to pry him off.

Laura leapt onto Peter’s back, wretched his head to the side and dug her fangs into his neck. She bit as hard as she could—blood flooding her mouth and she swallowed reflexively, not having a moment to think that she was _drinking her uncle’s blood_.

Peter yipped comically underneath her, growl dying to a guttural whine. He levered himself off Derek, withdrawing his claws from her brother’s mutilated stomach to grab at her instead. She ignored the claws that dug at her scalp and hair, instead focusing on hanging on and keeping Peter off Derek.

Her eyes landed on him, sitting numbly a few feet away, holding the remains of his stomach with his hands. Through his fingers and the blood that flowed so thickly it made puddles in his lap, she saw the glistening tissue of organ meat.

She growled, deep and low in her throat. Peter had gutted her brother. He nearly _killed_ him. She dug her claws deeper into the man’s sides, hanging on tightly against his thrashing. She levered her jaw and bit down. A hunk of flesh came with her as she reared her head back.

Peter’s noises turned to muted gurgles.

She held on all through his final struggles, his movements growing more and more sluggish until they stopped all together. In the end, she was just holding him, arms wrapped around his chest as she slowly lowered him to the ground. She stayed like that, crouched over his still body, holding onto him, until Derek crawled up to her weakly. He didn’t say anything. He just wrapped his own arms around her neck and held on, just as tightly.

 

The horror of what happened didn’t so much as dissipate as evolve into panic. She had killed her uncle. Her last surviving family, besides Derek. A man who had once helped teach her how to ride a bike, how to climb trees (without claws, so she could play with her friends on the schoolyard); a man whose sense of humor was biting and sarcastic and blessedly absurd (“Why don’t you want to wear the wolf hat, Laura? I think it looks fetching on you.”).

A man, who, despite the claws and fangs that he tried to rend Laura and Derek with moments ago, looked decidedly human in death, fingers gone back to rounded tips and teeth blunted and harmless once more.

Derek spoke first. “What are we going to do?”

Laura pulled back from her grip on him and looked around. A plan. They needed to plan. Peter looked like he’d been savaged by a tiger—throat torn out, clothes ripped and bloody. They, too, looked just as mauled, Derek’s shirt barely hanging on by tatters, and she had blood soaked down all her front.

Her jeans were ripped, too. Damn it, these were her favorite pair.

“We,” she started, then trailed off. They couldn’t leave him out here. Not just because of the memory of him (beyond the crazed look in his eye when he was bearing down on Derek intent on murder), but because they couldn’t risk him being found. By anyone. And especially not the cops.

They had fought him literally tooth and nail. He had dug his claws into Laura’s scalp. Their DNA was all over him. (She considered, briefly, cleaning him up, washing the evidence off him, and blaming a mountain lion, but—cleaning off the blood was problematic. How would a mountain lion take down a man without leaving a mess of blood?)

“We need to hide the body,” Laura said finally. Derek looked at her, then glanced at the body of their uncle. Finally, he landed back on her.

“Hide it? How? Laura—“

“Just,” Laura stopped him with a raised hand. “Just, we need to figure that out. But we have to hide him. No one can—There’s no way we can explain—“ She growled, frustrated. “We have to hide him.”

Derek looked ready to argue for a moment, but finally nodded. “Okay. There might be shovels back at the house? We can bury him.”

“We should.” Laura stopped. She took a deep breath. “We should bury him there, at the very least.” She made an aborted motion towards Peter’s body, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to pick him up. Derek put a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s okay. I got this.” He stood up and smoothly bent over to lift Peter’s body up over his shoulders. The body hung, limp, across his back. He started making a path back to the house without any input from Laura, and she got up to follow him.

Having some sort of action helped Laura focus her mind on the problem at hand. They were going to have to bury their uncle. But eventually (sooner, probably, rather than later) someone was going to notice him missing. And there would be a search. And, as much as these last couple of months taught her that police work is nothing like they show on TV, she did know that they would search the woods. Probably with dogs.

Laura had firsthand experience in how well a dog could smell. “We have to find a way to mask his scent.”

Derek grunted ahead of her. “We can bury a dead animal on top of him.”

“No, that wouldn’t—“ She stopped herself. Actually, it _could_. “Wait.”

“It’d fool a human, anyway,” Derek offered.

Laura considered it. Bury Peter deep, then put an animal carcass on top—if the police used cadaver dogs and they scented something, the cops would see the animal—“How did you come up with that idea?” Laura questioned, suddenly curious as to when Derek became Mr. I Know How To Hide a Body. (It would match his serial killer fashion sense, she had to admit.)

“Internet,” was Derek’s only reply.

Laura scoffed. “Figures.”

They had reached the leaf-strewn driveway of their old home. Derek darted across it quickly, Laura keeping an ear out for any approaching person or vehicles. It was thankfully quiet, and soon they were walking into their old yard.

“I can go get a dog,” Derek said. “That’ll probably work.”

Laura considered for half a second before shaking her head. “No. Not a dog. No one’s gonna buy the family pet thing—it’ll be too fresh to say it was from before the fire.”

Derek fell silent.

They reached the house. Laura scouted ahead, looking around before gesturing to Derek to follow her around to the back of the building, where the fire damage was greatest. He put their uncle’s body down gently on the ground before hovering next to Laura, decidedly not looking at the charred timbers of their home.

Laura turned to him. “Okay,” she said finally. “Here’s what I need you to do.” She nodded out towards the woods. “Go get a deer. Maul it—like a mountain lion would. I’ll start digging, then—“

“How like a mountain lion?” Derek interrupted.

Laura stared at her brother. “Do you not watch Discovery Channel?” She sighed when he shook his head. Running a hand through her hair, she huffed a breath, only to remember that her hand was covered in gore. Then again, the rest of her was completely covered in gore and filth. “Get a good bite on its neck, and snap it. Also, claw the stomach—lions like to tear open the bellies with their hind legs.” (Laura really only watched a couple of specials on the lions of the Sahara, but she figured that mountain lions would attack and disable their prey much the same way.

That, and she highly doubted that the police would do a necropsy on a dead deer, as long as it looked _sort of_ like a mountain lion kill.)

“Right.” Derek nodded, flashing her a funny look before dashing off into the trees, claws out and ready. Laura turned back to the body of their uncle.

“Guess I need to find some shovels,” she said to no one but herself.

 

She felt eerily calm digging Uncle Peter’s grave. She knew she would probably break down later in the safety of their motel room, but for now: calm. The exertion of labor kept her from wandering too far down dark mental paths. She kept a steady pace, shovel in, scoop, dirt out.

And, combined with her werewolf strength, she had a pretty sizeable hole dug by the time Derek came back, large doe over his shoulders like a lumberjack. He tossed it with a meaty thump on the ground next to her. As requested, its throat was savaged and neck twisted, its belly cut to ribbons, like something had been feasting on the organs.

Also, Derek’s face was a mess of blood.

Their lives were occasionally very strange.

“Need help?” Derek asked, looking down at her from the lip of the hole Laura had dug herself into. She straightened, and saw that she _had_ made it pretty deep. She just needed to square off (okay, more like rounded corner) the edge, and she’d be done.

She did so, then thrust her hand skyward. “Pull me out.” Derek crouched down and grabbed her forearm. She jumped as he pulled, and she easily got a knee back onto solid ground. They both stood up to admire her handiwork.

“How deep did you dig?” Derek asked, amazement lightening his voice.

Laura shrugged. “I dunno. It’s over my eyes, so…”

Derek laughed, shaking his head. “Forget barista. You should find work as a grave digger.” 

She frowned and smacked his chest with the back of her hand, but it did nothing to deter the onslaught of giggles that overtook him. “Yeah, yuck it up. Help me get him in there.”

Derek sobered immediately, but did follow his sister to where Peter’s body lay. Together, they carefully placed him in his new resting place some six odd feet under the earth. Laura stood awkwardly at the head of the grave. “Think we should say something?” Laura asked.

“Do you?” Derek countered.

Laura pursed her lips and stared at the uncovered body lying six feet below her. “He was a good man. You know, until—“

“Yeah.”

There was a lump in Laura’s throat that threatened to swallow her whole. “He was mom’s best friend, remember? He introduced her to Dad. If it wasn’t for him, we—“ She gasped, despite herself.

Derek walked around the edge of the grave and put an arm around her shoulders. “Lars,” he murmured.

“I’m really sorry I killed you,” Laura whispered.

Derek enveloped her into a hug, both comforting and pulling her away from the edge. “It’s okay, Laura. He knows that.” He kept saying that into her hair until she got her breathing under control and was able to push down the hard stone that her throat had turned into.

“Okay,” she said, finally. “Okay.” She pushed herself out of Derek’s grasp, and turned to pick up her discarded shovel. “Let’s—“

She didn’t need to finish. Derek picked up the unused shovel she had brought out when she had rooted around the garden shed—untouched by the fire that had scorched everything else. They worked in labored silence as they spread a decent layer of earth onto Peter’s body.

About halfway through filling up the grave, Laura stopped. “Now, the deer.” Once again, Derek helped her to toss the deer in, a great deal less gently than they had laid Peter. After it was sufficiently in the ground, they buried it, too.

Smacking her shovel on the mound that marked the grave, Laura surveyed their work. “Wow,” she said finally. “Good job.”

Derek rubbed his arm against his forehead. “Does it terrify you how good we seem to be at this?”

“Completely.”

 

They put the shovels back into the garden shed, then used the old hand pump well to wash what they could off of themselves and their clothes. Derek’s shirt was a lost cause, so he ended up ripping it up to use as wash rags for their faces and hair. When they were done, they looked less like mass murderers and more like a pair of kids that rolled around in some mud then promptly fell into the lake.

The walk back to the car was a wet, trudging one, both of them keeping to their own thoughts. Laura had no doubt in her mind that on their next woods run, they would both be howling their sorrows to the moon. But not now. Now, Laura had to figure out what to do next, now that their uncle was six feet under earth and deer and more earth. Someone would be looking for him, and also…

“We should find some monkshood,” she said when they got back into the Camaro.

Derek looked up at her, wide-eyed. Laura sputtered a curse. “Not like that. Live plants. For Peter.”

Her brother breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah, he’d like that.”

Growing up, Laura and Derek hadn’t necessarily scoffed at tradition, but they also didn’t take it as seriously as their father and uncle. (Or Thomas, Laura remembered. Thomas took to werewolf customs more than any of the children of the pack. Their mother had always seemed quietly bemused by this.) Despite the poisonous effects the plant had on wolves, (and humans, to a lesser degree), it was a symbol of their people. Wolfsbane, as it was also called, may defend the wary prey from the wolf in life, but in death, the plant was supposed to protect the wolf. Tradition held that it kept the soul of the wolf free and roaming the woods, forever under the light of the moon.

Laura had actually scoffed at the romanticism when she heard it.

She nodded to herself. “Yeah. He really would.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank my awesome beta mikkimouse for helping me with this story. I can honestly say that, if not for her, this wouldn't even exist. Thank you so much, dear.


	4. Heavy In Your Arms (my love is an iron bar)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner and a lacrosse game. If things weren't so awful, Laura just might think she had a handle on everything.

That night her dreams were filled with fangs and fur and blood. She woke up in a cold sweat with Derek’s hand on her cheek and her cell phone ringing balefully in his other hand. She rubbed her face when he allowed her to sit up, and plucked her phone from him.

“Hello,” she answered, and looked at the little glowing alarm clock on the end table separating the beds. 8:02A.M. Fuck, it was early.

“Miss Hale?” The voice on the other end asked, a bit timid. She confirmed, although it was a bit weird to hear herself referred to as ‘Miss’ and not ‘Laura.’

“This is Beacon Hills Hospital. I’m calling with some…” The woman’s voice paused, breath hitching slightly. Laura raised an eyebrow at Derek, whom she knew was listening to every word of the conversation. “Unfortunate news,” the woman ended.

Laura and Derek had decided last night after getting back from the woods and attempting to salvage what they could of their clothing (her jeans were a goner. Even if she knew how to sew, the rips were too many for her to ever really deal with), that they would just play clueless. That seemed the safest bet to avoid cop suspicion. Laura put on her best innocent expression and replied, “Unfortunate news? What’s going on?”

“It’s your uncle. Peter Hale,” the woman continued.

Laura decided it was okay to be upset. So she gasped and asked quickly, “Is he okay? Did something happen? Did he--?”

The woman stopped her overly concerned onslaught with “Well, he’s missing.” 

“Missing?” Laura parroted. “How can he be missing? The man is catatonic.” She blinked owlishly at Derek. He gave her a thumbs up in encouragement, and went back to eavesdropping.

“He was in his room when the evening nurse made her rounds, but this morning he was gone,” the woman explained. “We’ve searched the entire hospital. Our security is still looking for him, but…”

“How do you lose a catatonic burn victim?” Laura sniped. Derek frowned at her, but she shrugged. A Laura that knew nothing of last night would have been snippy, so she was going to go with it.

“It’s possible he woke up and left the hospital in a disoriented state.” She paused. “We can call the police to search.”

“We’ll be there in twenty,” Laura said. The woman thanked her for understanding and Laura hung up the phone. She looked at Derek. He stared at her.

“Impressive.”

She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I try.”

  

The hospital did indeed call the police, and Laura and Derek walked into the lobby of the long-term care facility to be greeted not only by the woman who had called, but also a uniformed deputy from the sheriff’s office and a security guard from the hospital itself. She walked up to the trio, breathing to visibly calm herself (mostly to keep herself from panicking, but it also served the purpose to make her look distraught).

“Have you found him?” She jumped right in. She thought it was better to keep them on the defensive. “Is there any news?”

“No news yet, Miss… Hale?” The deputy said, tripping over her last name. She nodded at him.

“Laura,” she offered. “And my brother, Derek.” Fidgeting with her hands, she finally crossed them over her chest. "We only moved back a few months ago, and…” She paused for a moment, the realization striking her hard that she and Derek had been back for two moons now. She shook herself mentally and rounded on the woman she assumed to be in charge (in some capacity, anyway) of the hospital. “Just how does a catatonic man wake up and wander out of your hospital without anyone noticing?” It was a question she honestly asked herself on the drive over.

The woman seemed completely ashamed, but the deputy spoke for her. “We’ll be reviewing the security footage from last night to determine just that, Miss Hale.” He flipped open his notepad. “In the meantime, I’m assuming you want to file a missing person’s report?”

Laura nodded, and started feeding the deputy answers. The woman (Assistant Director of Risk Management, as it turned out) also gave explanations of the schedule of care and respite that Peter had undergone not only last night but also in the six years that he’d been a resident of the facility.

“Is there any place you think your uncle would have gone? If he woke up suddenly?” the deputy asked after the barrage of information.

Laura looked back to Derek. He kept his face as stonily impassive as ever, letting her take the brunt of the conversation. She looked back at the deputy. “Home. He would’ve gone home.” 

“Home being…?” The deputy prompted. Laura took a deep breath.

“27 County Highway 40,” she recited. “The Hale house.”

The deputy looked startled, a flash of recognition in his eyes. He did look young, Laura decided. He probably wasn’t in the sheriff’s office when the fire happened, but he obviously recognized it now. The man nodded. “We’ll send some guys to search up there,” he said finally. “We’ll find him.”

“Okay.” Laura nodded.

The deputy turned back to the security guard and started asking him about the footage from last night. The woman offered Laura her condolences.

And with that, it seemed they were done. Making their goodbyes (and reluctantly leaving the deputy their contact information), Laura and Derek left the hospital. In the car once more, they turned and looked at each other. 

“Pancakes?” Laura quirked her brow.

“Shit yes.”

 

Laura handed off the keys to the Camaro to Derek, who then dropped her off at work. The job she had applied to on a whim at a coffee shop in town actually accepted her application. It was her first shift at the place, and it didn’t go as terribly as she feared it might. It probably helped that it was the first day of school, so the place was pretty empty for middle of the day, except for the occasional stay-at-home parent or retiree. She had a couple of hours to get used to the place and the finicky espresso machine before the three o’clock rush hit, and the building was suddenly flooded by teenagers and business people needing a pick-me-up.

By the time six rolled around and Derek pulled up in front of the shop in the Camaro, hastily tossing stuff from the passenger seat into the back, Laura was dead on her feet. 

“You survive?” her co-worker, a dozen years her senior and a mother of two to boot, asked, clapping a hand on her shoulder.

Laura forced a pained smile. “You make me almost miss waitressing.”

The woman laughed, patting her on the back before heading up to the counter to fill another waiting customer’s order. Laura took that as her cue to leave.

After wrapping up her work duties, she finally met Derek at the car. The back seat was full of art supplies. “You planning a project?” she asked, flopping into the passenger seat and propping her feet up on the dash. The ache was already subsiding, but she liked to milk the sympathy for as long as she could.

Derek actually looked sheepish. “Yeah.”

Laura perked up. “Really? Can I see it?”

“I’ve barely started it,” he said. Derek didn’t often let her watch him work, but sometimes when he was working through something or just painting for the hell of it, he would invite her in, and Laura loved watching how he could take a blank white canvas and add color and color until the canvas turned from stark emptiness to an image worth losing breath over.

She could barely paint her toenails, but her brother made _art._

They picked up sandwiches from the grocery store deli on the way home, along with food stuffs that required minimal cooking to prepare. (They had a microwave in their motel room, and little else.) Once they had traded stories of how they spent their day, they delved into the long-awaited living arrangement discussion.

“Do you want to stay here?” she asked Derek, who was still driving the car. She broke open her bottle of Coke and took a drink.

“Do you?” he threw back at her, eyes on the road.

She huffed out a breath. “Yeah. I do. But I’m asking you though. If you want to leave—“

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Derek said. Laura pinned him with a stare that went unmet. He continued, “I don’t really want to go back to New York. I could but…” He sighed and was silent.

Laura took a sip of her soda. In the six years of living practically on top of her brother, she had long since figured out which of his silences were sullen, which were meant to piss her off, and which ones were for him to work out stuff in his head. This time, it was the latter, and Laura could afford to give him as much time as he needed.

“New York was fun, but it’s over,” Derek said. “And I don’t really have anywhere else to go. We’re going to be starting over no matter what. So if you want to stay here, then…” He stopped, and ran a hand through his hair. “If you want to stay here, then here is good as any.”

Laura put a hand on his arm. “Yeah, okay.” Jerking her head to the art supplies in the back, she added, “And we’re not that far from San Fran or Sacramento, so you could still do your fancy art exhibits.”

“My art exhibits aren’t fancy.”

“Skirt, Derek. You made me wear a skirt.”

“It was my _final project_ , Laura. You don’t show up in blue jeans and a peasant top to a _final project_.”

They were still bickering when they pulled up to their motel room. Derek slotted the Camaro right next to the police cruiser.

“Shit,” Laura said. Derek shut off the car in reply.

They spilled out of the car and waited by their motel door for the officer to exit. Laura knew who it was before the man even fully exited his vehicle. “Evening, Sheriff Stilinski,” she greeted. Derek assumed his place behind his sister, silently offering back up.

“Good evening, Laura,” the sheriff returned. He strolled up to them. “It’s about your uncle. Can we talk?”

Laura shrugged and offered for him to come inside. Derek opened the door, and they ushered him inside, she bundled up the discarded clothing on the room’s only chair (none of it the bloody filth from last night, thank god. That had been stuffed tightly into plastic bag and thrown into the dumpster outside), and tossed the pile under her bed. “Please sit.” She grinned sheepishly. 

He did, and Derek went back into the car to bring in their groceries and his art supplies. 

“So, have you found him yet?” Laura said, sitting on the edge of her bed across from the man. She tried not to flinch and fidget too much.

He shook his head. “Sorry, no. Look,” he started. He waited until Derek was back inside, door to the motel shut behind him. “I wanted to talk to you about the house.”

Laura swallowed. They had talked about their cover story last night, in case anyone questioned them about it—but Laura didn’t think someone would so soon. “What about it?” she asked, and hoped she sounded nonchalant enough.

“When we were looking around it, we found a pretty large mound of freshly dug earth.” His heartbeat was steady, but Laura knew that wasn’t the whole story. The sheriff wouldn’t come to question them about a pile of dirt without first checking to see if something was buried underneath it.

Laura sat back and combed a hand through her hair, pushing it off her face. “Yeah, we were up there this weekend,” she said. “Checking out the place? We found a deer pretty close to the house. It looked like a mountain lion had gotten to it.” She looked the sheriff in the eyes. He was laidback now, but Laura had a pretty good idea he was quietly searching her for any signs of subterfuge. She continued, “I figured it would be best to bury it, to keep the mountain lion from coming back. We’ve been thinking of calling contractors up there, to see if there’s a way to rebuild the place.”

The sheriff leaned forward. “So you buried the deer?”

“ _I_ buried the deer,” Derek offered, just on the offensive side of sarcastic.

“I helped,” Laura insisted.

Derek snorted.

However, it did have the desired effect: the sheriff grinned. “Sure. So you’re thinking of rebuilding the place?”

Laura nodded. “Yes.”

“Maybe,” Derek countered.

“Not the same as it was,” Laura continued, barreling right over her brother. “But, you know, we’re looking into it.”

Derek crossed his arms and stared at the sheriff.

The sheriff shook his head with a laugh. “Okay, kids. Gotta admit it, you gave me a hell of a scare with a deer buried in your backyard.” He gave them a stern look. “You two aren’t going into the house, are you? It looks like it could collapse at any minute.”

Laura shot a look at Derek. He was lounging behind her, looking unimpressed as ever, but otherwise normal. “No, that’s why we’re calling people.”

“Good.” The sheriff stood up, and Laura followed suit to show him to the door, all of three feet away. (She liked the man, and wanted to be polite). He stopped before she could open the door. “Look, why don’t you two come over for dinner sometime?” he asked. “Stiles would get a kick out of seeing you again.”

Laura laughed. “You invite all of the lost kids over to dinner?”

He gave her a smile like his heart was breaking. Laura mentally kicked herself for laying it on too thick. He patted her on the shoulder. “Nah. Just the ones I like.”

She blinked, dumbfounded at him. Derek slunk up behind her. “I heard you got a job. Are you available on Thursday?” he asked. Laura shook her head.

The sheriff’s smile turned more genuine. “Good. Neither do I. How does 6:00 sound?”

“Sounds good to us,” Derek answered. 

He handed her a business card, and she opened the door for him. “You kids take care,” he said as he walked to his car.

She nodded, and waved while he got into his cruiser and drove away. She shut the door and sagged against it when he was finally out of her hearing.

“That went well,” Derek commented.

She threw a punch at his shoulder and he smirked, twisting away. The rest of the night devolved into a half-hearted wrestling match turned tickle fight, and eventually to dinner and old reruns of _Law & Order_.

Apparently, they were going to get away with murder.

 

Life returned to somewhat normal after that. Derek started working on his project—but only while she was at work. At home, he left the paintings covered up. She knew he had been painting because she smelled the thick fumes of oil paints nearly every day after returning home from the coffee shop.

That, and Derek’s hands were starting to turn multi-colored again.

Still, he kept it covered so she respected his privacy and didn’t peek. He’d show her soon enough, anyway.

Wednesday night rolled around and Laura muted the TV and turned to Derek. “So, tomorrow,” she started.

He raised an eyebrow, but otherwise kept his face buried in his sketchbook. Last she checked, he was doodling pictures of wolves running through trees—a pretty common occurrence for him, actually. Sometimes werewolves really were that cliché. “What about it?” he asked.

“I was thinking we can look for apartments before we go to dinner,” she answered. 

Derek continued to draw. “Okay,” he said finally. “We should bring something, too. A host gift.”

“What? Like a bottle of wine?” Laura asked. She knew crap about wine. What was it that Grandma Tabitha drank? Pinot Grigio?

“Or dessert,” Derek offered.

She nodded to herself. Desserts she could handle. She turned her attention back to the television, unmuting it and trying to catch back up with the story line. Derek continued to draw, the soft scratching sound of his pencil doing more to soothe her than words or anything else.

Laura knew that if she wanted to get Derek to do something he would otherwise drag his feet on, that she would have to do most of the work herself. It’d been like that ever since he was eight years old and she wanted his help in convincing their parents to build a tree fort. She came up with all the arguments and convincing reasons (and even, in a fit of creativity, a bar graph of how much happier _everyone_ in the family would be if the kids had a place outside to spend the majority of their time high above the ground in), so all that Derek had to do was stand behind her and smile.

The presentation went well, even though they didn’t get their tree fort.

But the lesson stuck, so when Laura woke on Thursday morning, she had collected an entire folder of collected brochures and ads to thrust in Derek’s face. “What are these?” he questioned before flipping open the folder and eyeing its contents warily.

“The places we’re going to go see today,” Laura replied cheerfully. She pulled out the itinerary she made. “Come on, get in the car. We’ve got a lot of places to go.”

Derek, despite glaring at the folder in his hands, did follow her outside. “This is half of Beacon Hills.”

“No, it’s not,” Laura quickly replied. She locked the door behind her, then unlocked the car. “It’s a quarter. Tops.”

Derek sighed, but did get into the car. Smiling to herself, Laura climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “Okay, so this first place looks really nice, and it’s right in downtown, so…” She continued to pester Derek with information all through the drive. Eventually she noticed his frown starting to disappear, and she grinned to herself.

 

Laura wasn’t sure if the apartment hunt was a success, but Derek didn’t jump out of the moving vehicle to escape her (he did that one time, and she refused to let him live it down), so she still considered it a win. He made minimal comments, and what opinions he did offer were negative, but still…

Not a bad start, she thought to herself.

It was nearing six, so she swung into the grocery store to grab something for the sheriff and Genim—Stiles, he liked to be called Stiles now. Cookies seemed the safest bet, and she grabbed a dozen from the store’s bakery.

Then it was off to the sheriff’s.

She had Derek read off the instructions to her one last time, but she found she still remembered (most) of the streets from when she used to bike—then eventually drive—there as a kid to look after Genim. The houses were more aged, the yards changed, and the cars different in the driveways, but everything else was the same. She looked askance at Derek, and had the strangest sense that if not for Derek’s perpetual stubble nowadays, it could have been easily eight years ago, just the pair of them off to go watch after the Stilinski kid.

They pulled up into the driveway of the sheriff’s house and both took a moment before climbing out of the car. The house was much the same way she remembered it, right down to the abandoned sports gear on the front porch. “I’m half expecting a seven-year-old to come running out the door,” Laura muttered drily.

Derek snorted. “Me too.”

They made it to the front porch. Laura nudged the sports gear with a foot. “Lacrosse. Guess you ended up converting him after all.” She looked at Derek to find him staring at the gear with an unreadable expression on his face.

“He was never patient enough for baseball,” Derek finally said.

Laura nudged Derek in the shoulder in show of support, then rang the doorbell. It echoed throughout the house.

“I’ll get it!” a young voice shouted from within. Laura clearly recognized it as Genim’s from the weeks ago at the vet's. A couple of stomping, rushed footsteps later, and the front door was thrown open, an older but still recognizable Genim grinning toothily at them. “Hey guys.” He side-stepped out of the way, and waved an arm. “Come in, come in.”

Laura stepped through, Derek behind her. A smell of something tomato-based wafted from the kitchen, along with the almost-overpowering smell of baking garlic bread. She looked around the place.

“Oh! You brought cookies!” Genim—Stiles, she reminded herself—exclaimed. He grabbed the box out of Derek’s hand and did this spinning shimmy before tripping into the kitchen.

Laura and Derek stood staring at each other in the Stilinski’s living room.

The sheriff emerged from the hallway that led back to his office—Laura still remembered the chastisement she felt when the man, only a deputy at the time, had caught her snooping around in the room. She had been thirteen and curious, meaning nothing by it, but he didn’t so much as yell at her as talk to her very sternly that it was wrong of her to poke around in other people’s private things without permission. She had hung her head and stared dourly at the floor until Genim had run up to her and jumped on her back, demanding ‘horsey rides.’

“Good,” the sheriff said, noticing the pair. “You’re here. Come help me set the table.”

And just like that, Laura and Derek found themselves in the dining room, setting out silverware and plating the garlic bread, working side by side with Mr. Stilinski and Genim. She sat down in front of a plate of spaghetti and meat sauce with a side salad and garlic bread,  Derek at one side and Genim at the other. Laura was hit with a pang of home and belonging so intense she almost gasped. Derek shot her a quick worried look, but she shook her head, forcing a smile at him. 

“Looks good,” she said through the lump in the throat, nodding to the food in front of her. Genim smiled brightly.

The sheriff, tearing into a piece of garlic bread, looked at Laura. “So, you kids are thinking about moving back to Beacon Hills?”

“Yeah,” Laura answered, twirling a forkful of the spaghetti around. “We actually just got back from looking at apartments.”

“Really? Where at?” Genim asked.

So Laura told him which places they had toured—with minimal commentary from Derek, occasional snort of derision for the particularly loathsome ones aside (which was, in all honesty, well deserved. Those apartments had been terrible).

“Oh god, you looked at those?” Genim groaned. “I had a friend that lived there—they’re infested with roaches. You do _not_ want to live there.”

“One ran over my foot while we were looking at the kitchen.” Derek sneered at his plate. “Real charming.”

“Well, that one’s definitely off the list,” Laura finished. “But the first one we saw, that place near the bookstore, just off of Boston. That seemed nice.”

Derek gave her a look like he was half considering it. “It was a little small.”

Laura shrugged. “We’ve lived in smaller back in New York.”

Genim planted his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “You guys lived in New York? What was it like? Did you have like, cool jobs? Did you see any Broadway plays?”

“One question at a time, Stiles,” Mr. Stilinski chastised. The kid opened his mouth--maybe to re-ask a question, but Laura beat him to it.

“New York was neat. I had a shitty waitressing job and Derek when to school at NYU.” Thinking, she added with a wink to Derek, “And no, we didn’t see any Broadway shows, but we did see a workshop stage production based on Little Red Riding Hood. Derek wanted to go because he had a crush on one of the actors in it.”

“Laura,” Derek whined. She grinned at him beatifically.

Genim’s eyes lit up with glee. “Holy crap, that’s awesome.” Laura couldn’t quite figure out which part of her various answers deserved that sentiment, but Genim—Stiles! She reminded herself for the millionth time—roared ahead with more questions, firmly hijacking the conversation.

“You were at college? What was your major? Did you graduate? Is college _anything_ like they show in the movies? I’ve got three more years to go, but I’m thinking maybe Stanford or Berkeley.”

And Derek, Laura was both surprised and tickled to find out, took the reins of the conversation smoothly. “I studied Fine Arts, and yes, I have my degree. And um, no? It’s nothing like the movies. For one, you actually have to study in order to graduate, not just sleep around and play pranks. That’ll get you failed out or expelled.” And with that, Derek ducked his head back down in his dinner, eating steadily.

Genim—Stiles!—seemed to have no problem maneuvering eating around his talking. “You’re an artist?” he asked, like the prospect of Derek making artwork both amazed and stupefied him. (Laura could maybe understand that. Derek looked so much like the jock with his muscles and everything. She could see someone completely missing the artistic side of her brother.)

Stiles continued. “I remember you used to draw cartoons for me, like all the time.”

Derek groaned into his garlic bread. “Oh God. Please don’t tell me you kept those.”

Stiles grinned cheekily at him. “Dude. _Of course_.”

Derek looked like he wanted to die.

Laura stuffed her face full of salad to keep from laughing. Finally, she managed (with nary a hiccup in her voice). “So, how about you, Stiles? What are you up to these days?”

And Stiles launched into a full dissertation of his school life, his home life (with a subcategory of his Scott bro-life) and lacrosse, which he had apparently taken up in the middle school, just like Derek had encouraged him to do all those years ago. (He had been into baseball, last Laura had seen him, and was constantly getting into trouble if his stories were to be believed. Derek thought that it had been because baseball was, at its core, a patient game, and Genim couldn’t be patient to save his seven-year-old life. Lacrosse, however, was energetic and violent, and more importantly _always active_. Laura had to admit, she could imagine Genim—Stiles!—being a much better lacrosse player than a baseball player.)

“And I’m on the team this year! Well, I’m still on the bench,” Stiles amended. Perking up, he added, “But Coach said that I’m next up if any of the first string are out.” He turned to his father, who had been nodding happily throughout the entire dinner, content to let the conversation flow over him. “I’m ahead of Scott this year by two seats. He’s kind of pissed, but I think it’s because Coach is afraid he’ll get another asthma attack on the field.”

“It’s a valid concern, son,” Mr. Stilinski said.

Stiles looked a bit sad. “I know. But he worked so hard all summer, you know? He really wanted to play this year. Especially since Allison moved here.”

“Allison?” Laura smirked. “Scott’s got a crush on the new girl?”

Stiles scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Crush is an understatement. She asked to borrow a pen from him in English class, and he _literally_ has not shut up about her since.”

Laura shared a look at Derek. His lips twitched at the corners of his mouth. Ah, young love. Speaking of which, Laura took it upon herself to dig for information like a good big sister should. “What about you? Any girlfriends?” Looking sideways at Derek, she added. “Boyfriends?”

Derek shot her a glare, which she happily ignored.

Stiles, too, seemed to sail right over her boyfriend comment. “There’s Lydia Martin, who’s perfect, but,” he trailed off, playing with the leftover sauce on his plate, “she doesn’t really know I exist.” 

Laura patted his arm in consolation. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

Stiles shrugged. “So, um, yeah.” He seemed to scrabble for something else to say, before alighting on, “Hey, so my first lacrosse game is next Saturday. Um, not this coming one, but next week.”

“Your coach is making you play the fall season?” Derek asked. Laura looked at her brother. Come to think of it, all of Derek’s games had been in the spring, well after the holiday break.

Stiles put his head on the table, just nearly missing his plate and groaned. “Oh god. We didn’t make it to the championships last year, so he thinks we need to ‘practice’ more—so he has us doing Fall Ball instead of track.” He muttered a couple of insensitive vulgarities about the coach’s person and possibly relationship with his mother, but Mr. Stilinski hushed him with an admonishment.

Laura just tried not to grin at the familiarity of it all.

Straightening suddenly, Stiles looked to Derek and Laura. “You guys should come watch! I mean, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be on the bench, but.” 

“No, that’ll be great,” Laura cut the kid off before he could devolve into another rambling segue. “We’d be glad to, right Derek?”

“Sure,” her brother grunted. Laura kicked him in his shin. “I mean, yes. Thank you.”

Stiles beamed across the table at them. His dad scooted his chair, leaning against its back for a moment before getting up. “Well, I think I’m done. How about you kids help me in the kitchen?”

“But they’re guests,” Stile protested. His father cuffed him on the shoulder as he passed, on the way to the kitchen.

“And if they help, it’ll go a lot faster,” he replied. Laura stood up, picking up her plate as she did. Derek followed suit.

Stiles, still sitting, eyed his father mistrustfully. “You just want first dibs on the cookies in there.”

The silence that followed that statement was answer enough. Stiles called out over his shoulder “You only get two!” but the sheriff was already in the kitchen.

Laura followed him in, plate and silverware in hand. “You, uh, on a diet or something?” she wondered. Crap, maybe a bottle of wine was a better way to go.

The sheriff huffed and shook his head. “Not really. Stiles just thinks that I should be.”

Laura eyed the man up and down. Despite his years (which weren’t that many), there was nothing about the man that said he needed to be thinking about a diet. His middle wasn’t even soft. “Um, why?”

He just waved a hand in the air, as if that explained everything. He turned and stationed himself at the sink. “I’ll wash. You dry. Derek, son, could you get the counters?”

They did, in fact, make quick work of it with all three of them squeezing into the space. Laura and Derek were well used to moving around each other, even in tight spots. The dishes were almost done when the sheriff cleared his throat.

“I have some updates. On your uncle.”

Laura froze for half a second. Did he find the body? Did he not believe their story about the deer, and dug up the entire grave to find Peter’s corpse chewed and mauled and covered in her and Derek’s blood? She glanced quickly at her brother, who had gone pale. He ducked his head and scrubbed harder at the counter top, leaving her to field the sheriff’s questions.

“What kind of updates?” she asked, swallowing thickly.

The sheriff sighed. “We got the security footage from the hospital. A nurse took your uncle out of his room and out of the building. After that, we haven’t gotten any leads on either of them.” He turned to her and, drying off his hands on the dishtowel, patted her gently on the shoulder. “I’m sorry. We’ve got an APB out on both of them, but…”

Laura nodded stiffly. “It’s been days. They could be anywhere.”

“I’m sorry, kiddo.”

Behind her, Derek nudged her with his shoulder, offering support or comfort, she couldn’t tell. She nodded again, dumbly, as the sheriff patted her once again and turned to finish the rest of the kitchen clean up. Outside the small room, she could hear Stiles muttering to himself about terrible evening television choices.

They weren’t going to find her uncle, because she had killed him. He lay buried and rotting in a grave she dug herself at her old, burnt-down home. The sheriff and his men were only wasting their time.

She didn’t deserve the other man’s sympathy.

Derek pressed himself flush against her back, hooking his chin over her shoulder. She reached back and buried her fingers in his hair, petting him. They stayed like that until the sheriff came back around to fetch them, quietly not commenting on their shared stance.

Stiles had school in the morning, and the sheriff an early shift, so Laura and Derek made their goodbyes and headed towards the door. The sheriff shook Derek’s hand and gave a fatherly pat to Laura’s shoulder. Stiles whined for half a moment, and followed them outside to send them off.

He halted on the front porch, standing like he was flash-frozen, with one foot still in the air. “Dude, you can’t be serious,” he muttered more to himself than to either of them.

Laura arched her eyebrow at him. “What?”

Stiles slowly lowered his foot, and waved frantically at the driveway. “Your car. You drive _that?_ ”

Laura spun to look at her Camaro. It sat, gleaming even underneath the meager light of the front porch. “Yes?” 

“You’re like Sam and Dean. Got the leather jacket and fancy muscle car and everything,” he said, waving his hands once more before dropping them to the railing of the porch.

She turned to look at Derek. She had no idea what this kid was talking about. Derek stood there, smirking. “It’s not a Chevy Impala, though,” he replied. Then quirked his head at Laura. “Who would be Dean?”

“Laura. Duh,” Stiles answered with impunity.

Right. She was still lost. Derek must have caught her utterly befuddled expression, and clapped a hand on her shoulder. “They’re books, Laura. Stiles thinks we’re characters in these novels.”

She blinked at the kid. “And you think I’m some dude named Dean.”

Stiles shrugged. “Dean’s the shit. He listens to classic rock, kills demons, and loves pie.”

Laura considered, tossing her car keys around in her hand. “I do love pie.”

Stiles’ laughter followed her as she walked to her car and opened the door. He called out as she and Derek climbed inside. “I’ll see you guys at the lacrosse game, right?”

Laura nodded at him. “Of course. Wouldn’t miss it.” She smiled one last time at the kid, and shut the door.

They left.

 

After the fire, and after they had run to the opposite end of the country—the farthest they could go without actually getting onto a boat--Laura received the funds from their family’s insurance. With her and Derek (and Peter in the hospital) being the literal _last_ of their family, all the policies distributed to her: the homeowner’s and life, the accidental death and (ironically) the fire protection and prevention.

It left Laura and Derek with a truly impressive heap of money. It was, at least, one less thing to worry about as they evaded hunters and territorial wolves and other creepy crawlies of the night that wouldn’t mind getting a hold of a pair of teenaged werewolves.

But they evaded capture and settled in New York, hashing out a quick and dirty treaty with the Pack there. Laura felt the only reason it worked so well was because the Alpha had a soft spot for her. He kept saying she looked just like his dead wife when she was a girl. Creepy, sure, but it bought Laura and Derek the protection they needed. (And if he petted her hair and stroked the side of her neck when they were discussing the finer points of their agreement behind closed doors, well, no one else needed to know that.)

For a while, life had been all about evading capture and notice. It had been about survival, not living. But the longer time went on with nothing happening, no hunter bursting out of a shadowy corner with a shotgun barrel filled with poison to put them down, the more Laura started to ease into their new lifestyle. She realized that they needed to do more than just hide and jump at their own movements all day.

So she convinced Derek to get his GED and apply for colleges. She got a job.

Then, somewhat to his own surprise, Derek got into NYU. They still had plenty of money left from the insurance company (Laura wasn’t completely dumb; she put the vast majority of it into the highest earning interest rate CD annuity account thing she could find at the bank. It sat and kept growing while Laura and Derek figured out life beyond survival), so tuition wouldn’t be a problem. Derek, on the night before his first day of classes, a new backpack with notebooks and pens, all fresh and ready to go for the morning, sat next to Laura on the couch. 

He waited until commercial break to speak. “You should have something, too.”

Laura turned to him. “Like what?”

He shrugged. “Something. Anything. Just for you.”

She told him she was okay with what she had, because she _was._ She had her life and her brother, and a too-small apartment in the thick of one of the busiest cities in the country, far away from the hunters that murdered her family.

Derek had slumped his head against her shoulder, and they spent the rest of the night watching old reruns together until they both needed to go to bed. It was the closest she had been to her brother in months.

In the morning, she saw Derek off to the subway station where the train would deliver him to his new classes. And she thought about what he said. Instead of going home, she found a car lot and bought the first shiny behemoth that made her mouth water in want.

The insurance money got Derek an art degree, and it got Laura a Camaro.

It was money well spent.

 

The week rolled by, and they had absolutely no leads on the woman with the necklace. The sheriff called them once with much of the same—no trace as to the missing nurse nor their uncle. (Laura nodded mutely at that. The nurse was a mystery, but she knew exactly where Peter was.)

Her birthday came around. She and Derek spent it in the dark of their motel room. She ushered in her twenty-fourth year with a chocolate cupcake and reruns of classic television.

On the night of the lacrosse game, she drove home from work, barely paying attention to the streets around her. When she pulled into the parking lot of the motel, the silence spread out around her, slick like oil. Her hackles rose, and she scented the air.

Nothing. She looked around, but saw nothing terribly out of place. Soft lights spilled from a few of the rooms' windows, vacation-goers taking last-minute end-of-the-summer holidays. Cars matched up to the occupied rooms, so nothing out of place there.

Laura shrugged her jacket tighter around her shoulders, and walked to their room. She unlocked the door quickly, slipping inside and locking up right behind her. Derek looked up from his lounging sprawl on his bed. “What is it?”

Resting her forehead against the solid frame of the door, Laura expanded her senses and listened. The smell of paint and paint thinner and canvas sealant overwhelmed her sense of smell, but her ears were unhindered by Derek’s afternoon activities. 

Wind rustled outside. A cold front was moving in, the first of the newly turned autumn season. A car passed by, but distant—probably the road that ran in front of their motel. Then…

Footsteps. A car door opening, and latching shut again. Another, then the sound of something heavy thumping onto a softer surface.

An engine roared to life, and then the vehicle rolled away. Derek came up behind her on silent feet. Whispering, he leaned in next to her. “What is it?”

Laura pulled back and shook her head. “Maybe nothing. I don’t know.”

Derek peeked out the window, lifting the blinds with a finger. The window caught the reflection of his brilliant blue eyes glowing in the darkness. After a moment, he left them drop again. “Nothing.”

Laura flopped down against her bed. She was getting tired of feeling like she was living on borrowed time—worse, hunted. She figured there’d be only one person watching her like that (if they were at all), and that would be Chris Argent. No one else cared enough about her presence in Beacon Hills.

Derek edged his way back to his bed and sat, facing her. “Do you want to stay in?”

Laura huffed out a breath. “Fuck no. I’m going to that lacrosse game. Argent can suck it.” 

Derek ducked his head to hide his grin. “Yeah, okay.”

 

They had time before the game, so Laura showered the day’s grime away. Feeling clean and coffee grounds-free once again, she and Derek dared the outdoors to dash to the car. Laura was reasonably sure that the hunters (if the hunters had been there) were gone by now, judging by the car’s exit less than an hour before, but still, it never hurt to be cautious.

The parking lot of the school was packed when Laura and Derek arrived. They found a parking spot far away from the lacrosse field. Laura didn’t like the idea of parking so far away, not with this hunted feeling making its home in the back of her neck, but it seemed they had little choice.

Then again, they could always park like the asshole who had driven his truck right onto the front lawn, next to the Beacon Hills High sign. Laura was sorely tempted to accidently scratch up that pretty paint job.

Much like earlier that night, the trip to purchase tickets and head to the bleachers was uneventful. Finally making it to the stands, Laura scanned the seats for spots still open. Any more people and it’d be standing room only.

“Laura!” a masculine voice called out. Laura pinpointed the caller as the sheriff, sitting several rows up, but near the end. She smiled brightly, and waved in acknowledgment. She nudged Derek, and they hiked up the squeaky metal stands to meet him.

He scooted over, offering them seats. They squeezed in next to him, Laura practically in Derek’s lap. He rolled his eyes, but wrapped an arm around her waist anyway, to keep her from sliding off the bleachers entirely.

Mr. Stilinski asked after their days, but other than the possible hunters spying on them, there wasn’t much to tell on either of their ends. 

The sheriff nodded, smiling to himself, before pointing out the various people he recognized in the stands with a sprawling explanation worthy of his son’s ramblings of the inter-relationships of half the high school. A pretty brunette was apparently Allison, newly moved to Beacon Hills and nigh immediately befriended by Lydia, the red-headed homecoming queen-to-be. Also, Lydia held the honor of being the long-time crush of Stiles. Her boyfriend, however, was captain of the lacrosse team and had a bad tendency to pick on both Stiles and Scott. “Not that he’d let me do much about it. Apparently I have to let him solve his own problems.”

“Those your words? Or Stiles?” Derek questioned, his first words of the night. 

The sheriff gave a rueful chuckle. “Stiles. If it was up to me, that kid would’ve been arrested just for being a punk. But that’s also frowned upon.” 

“There’s always parking tickets,” Laura offered.

“Way ahead of you, kiddo,” the sheriff admitted. He tilted his head back. “Thank God that kid drives a Porsche.”

Laura shared a look with Derek. A sixteen-year-old with a Porsche? She remembered how she acted when she first bought the Camaro, and she had been nineteen. Derek grinned at her, and hid it into her shoulder.

She was just about to ask after Stiles when the band started up the familiar strands of the Beacon Hills fight song. The stands cheered and stood up as the lacrosse team came spilling out from around the corner, from the direction of the school. Laura and Derek stood with them, Derek clapping stoically and Laura stretching on her tiptoes to catch a glimpse of Stiles.

“Number twenty-four,” the sheriff shouted over the roar of the crowd.

Laura nodded. She quickly picked out the number. Sure enough, the lanky frame wearing the number 24 jersey was Stiles, tripping out in his pads and gear, looking excited and energetic as ever. A dark-haired kid bearing the number 11 kept close by his side, and Laura recognized him as Scott from the vet's. Laura cheered loudly for the both of them, and Stiles looked up at the crowds, clearly searching for them. She waved, bright and large, and his eyes lit up as he spotted them. But he was soon ushered off by the rest of the team, spilling onto the benches that lined the field of play. 

The opposing team gallivanted onto the other side of the field, to much less cheers than the home team. Laura sat down, thigh pretty much on top of Derek’s, but still pretty well squeezed next to the sheriff on her other side. Derek snuck his arm back around her waist, holding her onto the bench.

“Do you think he’ll get a chance to play?” she asked the sheriff.

The sheriff stared out across the field, a small wistful look on his face. “Maybe. He’s been training hard all this summer.”

The teams ran onto the field, goalies dashing to their posts. Stiles wasn’t on the field, but lacrosse tended to switch out its players quickly. It was a quick and often dirty, sometimes violent, sport.

The referee blew the whistle, and the players sprang into a quickly swirling chaotic motion of running and dodging and slinging the ball back and forth to each other in their nets.

It was pretty much the exact same as when she’d watch Derek play, back when she sat squished between her mother and father and Thomas, Cora always on their mother’s lap because she was the baby. Laura thought the games were interesting, but not in the way her father and Derek found them. They loved the sport, loved the intensity of it. She and Thomas were quite satisfied sitting back and commenting on the people in the stands, checking in on the score every once in a while to see if they were still in the lead or not.

Sometimes they didn’t pay attention to the game at all, finding the hour stuck outside on the cold metal stands better spent discussing the newest movies in the theaters, or when their favorite characters on their TV show were just going to suck it up and kiss already because c’mon, can’t they see they’re perfect for each other? Their mother would elbow Laura in the side if they got _too_ distracted from the game, though, and reminded them that they were supposed to be supporting their brother. So they’d turn glumly back to the field and cheer dutifully whenever Derek had the ball (or wince in anxious suspense whenever he pulled some stunt that was _this close_ to revealing their family heritage for _the entire town to see_ ).

The crack of a lacrosse stick slamming into another jolted Laura out of her reverie. Two players stood face to face in the center of the field, screaming at each other. Both coaches had to come and march them to their respective benches, like parents with small children who kept fighting with each other.

Derek groaned. “That was one of our better players.”

The sheriff perked up next to her. “Hey, that’s Stiles.”

She turned back to the game. Sure enough, #24 was jogging out onto the field, positioning himself on the offensive line to take the booted player’s place. Laura patted Mr. Stilinski’s knee in shared excitement. Derek sat a little straighter next to her.

The referee blew the whistle again and the ball was in the air. Stiles didn’t do much more than run with the flow of the game, but their team did score a goal. It was several more plays before Stiles even caught a ball, passed to him by another player that wasn’t much more than a number to Laura, before Stiles himself passed it back to the long-legged kid that tended to score the most goals. The kid shot, and Beacon Hills was officially two points ahead.

Half-time came and went with Derek lounging content on the small corner of the bench, still supporting most of Laura so she didn’t slide completely off the seat, while Laura laughed and joked with the sheriff. The Beacon Hills High band insisted on playing jazzed-up versions of old eighties songs in the interim. Then the players were piling back onto the field, referee’s whistle shrilling through the night air, and ball in motion.

Stiles actually gained possession of the ball in one daring play, using the chaos that exploded from the opposing team’s offense running into his own teammate to scoop up the discarded ball and dash to the goal. The sheriff jumped to his feet at the sudden turn around, almost knocking over Laura entirely. He cheered loudly, gaining several unbelieving looks from the people around them. Laura bit her lip to keep from giggling.

Derek hauled her back up to her seat while the sheriff settled, faint flush rising on his cheeks. Stiles, on the field below, passed the ball in a swooping arc to another teammate, who was almost on top of the goalie. They scored without too much effort, and the stands cheered loudly.

The sheriff shrugged helplessly. “Whoops. I just…” 

Laura patted him on the shoulder.

Beacon Hills won, four points in the lead. The players whooped and hollered, the roar of the crowd drowning them out. The sheriff jumped again, clapping enthusiastically. Laura sprang up too, in an effort to not get flung off from her seat again. She pulled Derek up with her, both cheering in victory. 

The stands started emptying out—and since they were at the end, they were some of the first to trudge down the steps to the exit. She noticed the redhead the sheriff had pointed out to her earlier take a running leap at the kid in the #37 jersey, who caught her by the waist and spun her around. He laughed and took off his helmet to kiss her soundly on the lips. Guess that was the captain of the team—Jackson, according to Mr. Stilinski.

As they stepped onto the field, Stiles, helmetless, caught sight of them and waved madly. Derek perked up next to her. She pushed him by the shoulder towards the boy. He trotted off, looking happier than she’d seen in months.

Laura had every intention of walking the sheriff over to where she saw Stiles’s friend Scott, to maybe wheedle more information from the dark-haired boy himself on his love life. Halfway there, a man in a crisp button-up with a tie, suit jacket draped over his arm, shanghaied the sheriff into a conversation. The sheriff patted Laura on the arm, encouraging her to follow her brother. With one last look in his direction, she did so. 

A small crowd had formed around Derek when Laura made it there. Stiles was in the forefront, gesturing erratically, telling some story or another. Scott was there too, grinning and nodding along. The redhead and the captain of the team, along with the kid who played goalie and a few others, also hung around, listening in.

“No really. Derek was the captain of the lacrosse team when he was in high school,” Stiles said. Derek had his arms crossed and rolled his eyes, but he didn’t refute the kid.

Laura piped up. “Which is kind of amazing, considering how clumsy he was as a kid.” Derek glared at her, growling under his breath, but she continued, grinning. “Remember, Genim? He had these big puppy hands and feet that he kept tripping over.”

Stiles stood shock still, staring at her with wide eyes. The blond kid standing next to him muttered, “Genim?”

Oh. Whoops. Laura giggled to herself. Derek bit out her name through clenched teeth, but it was Stiles who slapped her on her shoulder. “Oh my god!” he shouted. “I thought we had an understanding on _never speaking that name_.”

Laura shrugged. “Not a verbal one.”

Stiles threw his hands up in the air, huffing. He picked up his discarded lacrosse stick from the ground, and stomped off. “I need to go hit things.”

Surprisingly, most of the crowd followed him as he stormed back on to the playing field, including the redhead and the team captain, Scott and the goalie, and her own brother. The blond hung around for a moment. He looked familiar, and Laura placed him as the kid from the library, almost two months ago.

“So, Genim.”

Laura had the presence of mind to look sheepish. “Yeah. Not that I blame him for wanting to go by something else.”

The kid looked over his shoulder at where the others were tossing a lacrosse ball back and forth, Derek and (more surprisingly) the redhead also joining in. “I’ve known him for two years and I didn’t know that. I don’t think some of his _teachers_ know.”

Laura raised an eyebrow. Then again, Stiles always did have a knack with getting his way. She shrugged, and struck out her hand. “Laura. Derek’s sister.”

The blond grabbed her hand with a surprisingly soft grip and shook it once. “Isaac.”

She smiled brightly. “Nice to meet you.”

Isaac hung out for maybe a minute longer before running back to join his teammates where they were now chasing each other around. Isaac dove into the fray gamely, colliding into Scott, who just swung him around with a laugh into the kid in the #6 jersey. Laura watched their shenanigans until she noticed another person walking up to her and standing close by.

“Hey. Are you, um, Stiles’ friend?” the girl asked. Laura turned carefully to see who it was—she already knew it wasn’t the sheriff, that much she could tell from the footsteps, which were too light and too gliding to be the man’s. But no one else in town really knew her, besides a few co-workers.

It was the girl the sheriff had pointed out earlier—Allison. Laura nodded and offered a “Yeah” in affirmation. The girl settled warmly into a smile, and stuck out her hand, much like Laura had with Isaac earlier. “I’m Allison. I’m,” she stumbled over her words, blushing prettily in embarrassment, “I’m new. Just moved here a few weeks ago. I’m still trying to meet people.”

Laura grinned at the girl, but took her hand and shook it. “I know what that’s like,” she offered a bit ironically, but Allison didn’t seem to catch it. “Laura.” She glanced in the direction the boys were playing. They had migrated closer to the far goal to make practice shots—Derek and the girl still with them. Laura added, “So, Stiles huh?”

Allison bit her lip and ducked her head down. She seemed to have no idea what to do with her hands. “Yeah. I mean, um.” In a soft voice, she added, “He’s friends with Scott, right?”

Laura could barely contain her smile. She turned and faced Allison fully. “Oh! Allison!” she said with fake recognition. Allison blinked up at her, wide doe eyes confused. “Scott talks about you _all the time_.”

Allison’s entire face lit up. “Really?” she asked, sort of breathless.

Laura nodded. “Oh yeah. He thinks you’re very pretty—which you are,” she added for good measure. “You know, he loves animals. Even works at the vet’s.”

Allison’s face looked like it would split in two from all the glee and excitement she was barely able to contain. She actually bounced on her toes. “I like animals, too!”

Oh, young love, Laura thought to herself. She mentally patted herself on her back. She was about to turn away to go gather up her brother (or maybe stick around to play with him and his band of hooligans), when a flash of silver caught her eye.

Allison was dressed like a lot of the teenaged girls she’d seen—skinny jeans and ankle boots and a flowery peasant top underneath some corduroy-like jacket. She looked like she came right out of an ad from a clothing store. But the silver came from a long chain looped around her neck to hang down her front, a large pendant catching the bright lights from the stands and reflecting it.

The pendant itself was emblazoned with a wolf howling at a star. Almost a perfect match to the crudely drawn image Adrian Harris had given Laura weeks ago. Laura swallowed a gasp, lump lodging in her throat. “Cool necklace,” she finally bit out.

Allison picked the piece up to spool it around her fingers. “Thanks. My aunt gave it to me.”

As Allison said this, a blonde woman older than Laura by a few good years broke off from the rabble of parents and other game watchers to approach the pair. She slid in squarely next to Allison, looping an arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Who are you talking to?” she asked right into Allison’s hair, glancing at Laura.

Allison smiled. “This is Laura. She’s friends with Scott, that boy I was telling you about?”

The woman looked Laura up and down, lingering over her belt buckle and her lips, before finally staring right into her eyes. “I bet she is,” the woman muttered. Laura wasn’t even sure if Allison caught it.

Laura fought to keep from taking a step backwards. She stood her ground, and hid her clenching fist under the guise of scratching her thumb. The urge to run away, to grab her brother and pack up the car and leave town and drive, to not stop until they reached the other ocean once more hit Laura squarely in the back of her neck. But she stayed.

The woman held out her hand to shake. “Kate,” she said. “Allison’s aunt.”

Swallowing thickly, Laura plastered what she hoped was a sincere (or at least not sickly) smile on her face and took the woman’s hand. The grip was tight and her palm was calloused, heartbeat strong and steady. “Laura,” she returned.

God help her for being polite.

Allison darted her eyes between the two of them for a moment and Laura dropped Kate’s hand and took a step back. The girl piped up, with less enthusiasm in her voice than before, “Laura noticed my necklace.” She fiddled with the pendant again.

Kate looked at Laura. Laura smiled quickly. “It’s pretty cool. She says you gave it to her?”

The woman’s eyes swept downward, and for the life of Laura, she couldn’t tell if Kate was looking at the necklace or her niece’s throat. “It used to be mine, but now?” She gave a lazy half-shrug. “I figured it was time Allison has it.”

Laura nodded as if that made any sort of sense to her. Allison looked at her blankly.

Kate patted the girl on the shoulder. “Ready to go, sweetie?” she said, even as she urged Allison away, back towards the milling throngs of people still left around the stands. Allison waved at Laura, an uneasy smile flitting across her face. Laura waved back, and thrust her hands into her jacket pockets.

Jesus, she needed to go find Derek.


	5. My Boy Builds Coffins (one of these days, he’ll make one for you)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, at least Laura knows who the arsonist is now. She just has to figure a way to keep her and Derek alive.

In hindsight, she probably wasn’t very subtle when she made a beeline towards Derek halfway across the field. He looked up at her approach long before any of the other boys noticed her presence. His raised eyebrow was the only sign he noticed something was wrong.

She hooked a thumb over her shoulder, whispering, “We need to go.”

He frowned. Maybe he was going to argue—Laura didn’t know—but she pled with him with her eyes to not put a fight, to just leave with her and save the questions for later.

Miraculously, he did. He caught Stiles’ attention, who jogged over with Scott in tow. “We gotta go,” Derek said.

Stiles whined, but capitulated. Scott waved merrily at them, wishing them a good night. Derek hung around for a second longer. “You did well. During the game.”

Stiles’ smile overwhelmed his entire face. Laura’s heart clenched in her chest. She snagged the edge of Derek’s jacket sleeve and pulled him towards her. He followed, and they strode evenly, no halter in their steps or breaks in their stride, across the field. She was proud of herself for that.

When they got to the car, all the way on the other side of the parking lot, she exploded. “It’s her.”

Derek gave her an odd look. He urged her into the vehicle and made her shut the door before asking what she meant. “It’s her,” Laura repeated. “The woman. I saw the necklace.”

Derek stared at her with wide eyes. The color drained out of his already too-pale face. She realized she wasn’t making much sense—probably sounded half-insane, so she took a deep breath and started over. “I met her. Allison’s aunt. She had the necklace. Said her name was Kate.”

The words sounded sharp and fragmented even in her own head. She had no illusion to how awful they must have sounded to Derek. Derek looked at her, poleaxed. Laura rambled on. “It fits. Everything Harris said. Blonde. Good-looking. She’s the right age, too—probably would’ve been mid-twenties when—“ She let herself trail off.

The expression ‘white as a sheet’ never held too much meaning for her until now. Derek looked sickly and pale, green eyes so wide she could almost see white all around the rim of his iris. She sucked in a great big coughing breath, trying to fill her lungs. “We need to, we got to…”

“We should hide,” Derek said, turning to stare, blank-faced and scared, at the glove box.

Laura nodded absently to herself, and thrust the key into the ignition. They drove back to their motel in silence. Not that they usually talked much while in the car, but this time the silence was oppressive, cutting them with its sharpness and squeezing the breath out of their chests. Derek kept a steady eye behind them, making sure they weren’t followed. They weren’t, as far as they could tell.

She drove them straight to the motel. Right away, Derek went to his duffel bag and started tossing clothes into it, dirty and clean alike. “Wait,” Laura said.

He looked at her while half bent over the open maw of his bag, like she was crazy. Laura ran a hand through her hair.

“We’re panicking,” she said. “Maybe over nothing.”

Derek glared at her. “You call this nothing?” He didn’t need to clarify. She knew exactly what he meant. She buried both her hands into her hair and tugged, the sharp momentary pain grounding.

“I’m not saying it isn’t bad, but,” she started. She leaned against the door, letting her head thunk against the wood. “The only thing that really changed is that I know what she looks like now.”

Derek pinned her with a worried look. “She knows what you look like, too.”

“There’s no guarantee that she even knows who I am.”

Derek looked at the floor, gaze somewhere left of Laura’s feet. He didn’t say anything, just breathed, heavy and too quick. She carefully crossed the room over to him and, when he didn’t flinch at her closeness, dragged him into a hug.

“We’ll be okay. We just have to play it safe for a while,” she muttered into his hair.

“We’ll be safer if we leave,” Derek countered.

Laura shrugged, and readjusted herself so she was sitting on the bed, next to Derek, arm still looped around his hunched shoulders. “Okay. Maybe. But, we’re close.” She took a moment to gather her words. Derek leaned into her in the meantime. “ _We_ know who she is now. We just need a way to prove it to the police.”

Derek scooted back and stared at her, searching her eyes. “You’re not going to go after her yourself?”

Laura let out a breath. “Think about it this way,” she said. “If we do that, the hunters will just come after us. They might not believe us that she deserves it. Or even care.” The red letters of the alarm clock were bright in the darkness of the room, but she rested her eyes on it anyway. “But,” she breathed, words barely over a whisper, “she did kill nine people. Put Uncle Peter in the hospital for six years.”

She looked Derek in the eyes. His were wide with something she couldn’t quite name. He looked young. So lost and so very young. “We take it to the police—she goes to jail for life. Then no hunter can go after us. We’ll be safe.”

Derek was quiet. Finally, he said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever tried that before.”

Laura shrugged. “Law of the jungle. Gotta be adaptable.”

 

Derek didn’t quite lose that hunted look in his eyes, but it lessened considerably. They made a plan for the upcoming weeks—they would stay out as much as possible, surround themselves with people, no matter how much Derek’s anti-social tendencies hated it.

“We can hide at the house,” Derek had suggested.

Laura shot that idea down quickly. “And give them an open invitation to kill us in a secluded spot where no one can hear us howl? Sure, let’s get right on that.”

Derek glared.

Hiding in town was safer. Derek could hang out with her while she worked. And will all the customers, no one would dare try anything there. The motel was a problem, though.

“We should move,” Laura commented, standing in the middle of the room, hands on her hips as she considered strategy. Derek raised an eyebrow at her in silent question. Laura waved a hand. “We’re too removed out here. Exposed.”

“You want us to check into the Grand?” Derek snarked. He huffed, unpacking his hurriedly stuffed duffel bag from earlier—sniffing each piece to determine the clean from the worn, and separating them into little piles.

Laura shrugged. “Do they have a Grand here?”

Derek stared at her. “You can’t be—“

“People, Derek,” Laura cut him off. “We’ll be safer the more people are around. Here,” she waved an arm around, encompassing their motel room and the absolute _deadness_ outdoors, “we’re too isolated. Too easy for anything to happen.”

Derek grunted in annoyance, but didn’t refute her.

Laura knew they didn’t have enough to make a case against Kate—they didn’t even know her last name yet. They only thing they really had was Adrian Harris’s testimony about a blonde woman in a bar with a necklace asking uncomfortable questions. And she’d _seen_ the necklace, but…

“We need to connect the necklace to her,” Laura said. Derek had separated all his laundry and had the dirtied ones piled high in his arms. He unceremoniously dumped them all in a pile in the corner by his bed.

“I thought you said that Allison told you she gave it to her,” Derek commented. He went back for his clean laundry.

Laura tapped her pen against her teeth. “Yeah, but are the police really going to care about that?”

Derek faced her down, eyebrow raised. “You’re the one that watches all the cop shows.”

“Contrary to popular belief, that doesn’t actually make me a cop.”

Derek shook his head and turned his attention back to his laundry. “You can ask Allison about the necklace. Take a picture of it with your phone or something, if it’ll make you feel better.”

Laura considered. “Yeah,” she breathed out finally.

Ten minutes later, Derek balled up a sock and threw it at her head when she started flipping through television channels to find something to watch. There was nothing wrong with watching cop shows.

 

They made it through the night without a hunter waking them up with a barrel of a wolfsbane-laced .45 in their mouths. Laura could tell she wasn’t the only one that had fear-induced dreams that night. The bags under Derek’s eyes were more pronounced than ever.

They spent the morning packing up their belongings and loading everything up in the Camaro. Derek’s paints got the privileged space on the backseat, to keep the canvases from getting damaged.

It was okay. They didn’t have that much stuff between the two of them anyway.

Laura paid her bill at the motel for their very nearly two-month stay. The price was high but, honestly it was a lot cheaper than their rent back in New York, so she wasn’t going to cry about it anytime soon.

Besides, moving to a nicer establishment in the city proper was really going to give her something to cry about.

 

They found a nice hotel off the main strip of downtown Beacon Hills where all the artsy places tended to crop up: the kitschy shops that sold reimagined antique jewelry, bohemian coffee lounges and designer fashion boutiques. It was as high-rise as Beacon Hills was probably going to get, and in a fit of whimsy, Laura requested a room on the sixth floor-just one under the penthouse.

Normally, it wouldn’t take them very long to move all their belongings into their new room, but there were people milling about in the halls and near the elevator, and Laura didn’t want to risk seeming… inhuman. She and Derek watched a family of four load their luggage into a beat-up van, the mother and father seeming to strain under just two suitcases of weight. Laura nudged Derek with an elbow, and they copied the family, being careful to only take a bag at a time and pretend it was a lot more burdensome than it really was.

It was utterly exhausting.

Finally, when their things were in their room, they risked a trip to the grocery store to stock up on food and supplies. That done, she and Derek holed up in their new, admittedly fancy, room and did nothing but worry for the rest of the night.

She almost hoped something _would_ happen, just to keep her from going insane.

 

Laura woke the next morning to a text from a number she didn’t recognize. All it said was _“When do you work this week?”_ She held the phone in front of her face, not even bothering to lift her head from the pillow to glare at it in confusion.

A few seconds later, another text appeared. _“This is Stiles. Got your number from Derek.”_ It even had a smiley face at the end.

Laura huffed out a laugh and typed back. She was working the morning to afternoon shifts for pretty much the rest of the week. It was better that way, she thought, to get off in the afternoon so she had time to get back to their room come nightfall. She didn’t really like the idea of traveling back to the hotel from work in the dark.

She scoffed at herself. A werewolf, afraid of the dark? What had the hunters turned her into?

Stiles texted back quickly after she had sent him her reply. “ _Scott asked out Allison. I’m trying to convince him to take her to your coffee place.”_

She raised an eyebrow, but Stiles’ reply was quicker. _“So we can spy on them.”_

 _“Awesome >:D,”_ she sent back.

Derek stared at her from his side of the room. Without waiting for him to ask, Laura tossed the phone back onto her nightstand. “You’re the one that gave him my number.”

He groaned and buried his head underneath the covers. Laura laughed until she was breathless.

 

A day later, Stiles bounded into the coffee shop and went straight to the counter. Laura knew it was him without even having to look. She whipped out from where she was restocking the back shelves and greeted the kid.

“They’re right behind me,” Stiles gasped. Her mind went first to hunters, but Stiles’ entire body screamed excitement, not fear. She realized quickly he meant Allison and Scott.

“Go sit with Derek.” She pointed to where her brother sat a few feet away, tucked behind a potted ficus. He raised an eyebrow at her over his sketchbook. She ignored him.

Stiles did as he was bid, practically sliding his chair into Derek when he threw himself at it. True to his word, Allison and Scott walked into the shop a few moments later, Scott holding the door for Allison and Allison twittering happily behind her hand.

Laura resisted the urge to drop her chin into her hands and coo at them.

The pair dithered about five paces in front of the counter, staring at the menu behind Laura’s head. Laura waited patiently for them to decide on what they were ordering, and shared amused glances with Stiles in the meantime. Finally, they made up their minds on two overly sweet concoctions. Scott paid. He also got a cookie. For them to share.

Laura barely managed to catch the “aww” of cuteness before it left her mouth. Stiles, however, did not.

Luckily, Scott and Allison didn’t seem to notice. They waited for their drinks and snack, then went to a table near the front of the shop near the windows. It wasn’t hard for Laura to eavesdrop on their conversation, but they were too far away for Stiles’ ears to pick up. He squirmed in frustration.

Finally, he stood up and walked to the counter. “I can’t hear them.”

She shushed him. “Just watch.” She’s done the trick before, with waitressing friends back in New York when they wanted to spy on higher end clientele that managed to wander through their less-than-savory doors. She excused it under the premise of being able to read people’s lips.

“I think he must have asked her about her day. She’s talking about her classes.” Laura told Stiles. She could only see Allison’s face from her vantage point, so she made sure to filter her wording to make it seem like she could only pick up on the girl’s side of the conversation.

“She takes French class.” Laura paused. “And she’s saying something in French.”

“This is _awesome_.” Stiles breathed out in the soft tones of a man who’s experiencing a life-changing event. “I’m inviting you into _all_ my ideas.”

Laura patted him on his cheek and went on translating the new couple’s conversation. Derek rolled his eyes at her, but a few minutes later found him walking up to her and Stiles at the counter and less than subtly leaning in.

Allison was talking about her family. Laura was halfway through the girl’s first sentence before the meaning really hit her. “My dad is a security consultant and a firearms dealer for the police. We travel a lot, but…” Allison smiled shyly at Scott. “He promised that he’d try to keep us here for the rest of school.”

“Your dad sells guns?” Scott asked. “What’s he doing up here?”

Allison actually looked thoughtful. “The sheriff’s office up here is going through a refit, but.” She shrugged. (Stiles groaned. “Oh my god, you have no idea.”) “We usually stay in big cities and he travels up to the little areas like this.”

(Stiles frowned when Laura relayed the description of Beacon Hills to him. Derek elbowed him in the ribs.)

“I think maybe he feels bad for not being more stable. I, um, got into some fights back in San Francisco, and I think he blames himself.”

Laura shared in Scott’s disbelief. He gasped. “You got into fights?”

Allison gave Scott a curiously blank look. “Yeah. You’d be surprised.”

“You’re like, the _nicest_ person I know. What did they do?” Scott sounded absolutely scandalized. Laura didn’t blame the kid. She was pretty sure Allison was the nicest person _she_ knew, herself.

Allison ducked her head. “It was just… This asshole kept picking on one of my friends. He wouldn’t let up. It was awful. It got so bad I sent the guy to the hospital.”

“Dude.”

Laura agreed with Scott completely.

The girl blushed. “I didn’t mean to.”

Scott shook his head. “The jerk probably deserved it.” Even with him facing completely away from Laura, she could imagine the little boy grin that most likely graced his face. “You sent him to the hospital? That’s kind of awesome.”

Allison grinned. “Really?”

“Totally.”

Stiles shook his head. “Scotty boy has no idea what he’s getting into, does he?”

All three shared a look and burst out laughing. Even Derek had his head bent over his arms, shoulders shaking. Laura grabbed his arm in shared delight, and he looked back at her, more carefree than she had seen in years. He looked almost like the kid he was before.

She only belatedly realized that Allison was standing a few paces away, a less-than-amused expression on her face. Laura straightened immediately, and Stiles and Derek backed a few paces to allow Allison room.

“May I have a glass of water?”

Laura grabbed a glass for her and pointed to where the water pitchers were placed. Before she left, Laura leaned over the counter, catching her attention. “You two really are an adorable couple.”

Allison stared at Laura, wary for half a second, before breaking out into a blinding grin. “Really?”

The clink of a necklace chain drew Laura’s attention as Allison swiveled on her heel to get her water. When she turned back around, Laura—still stretched across the countertop, motioned Allison over once more. “I’ve been meaning to ask,” she started. “You said your aunt—“ She nearly stuttered over the name. “Gave you that necklace. Do you know where she got it?”

Allison grabbed the pendant to study it. “It’s a family heirloom,” she said. “The Argent family crest.”

In that moment, everything seemed to get very quiet. Distantly, Laura know that people were still talking over their coffees and making all the noises associated with the life of a coffee shop: liquids slurping and newspaper rustling and fabric sliding across narrow wooden seats; but all extraneous noises fell away in the wake of the name that crossed Allison’s lips.

Argent.

As in Allison Argent. Daughter of Chris Argent. Niece to Kate Argent.

Argent family crest.

It made a certain amount of sick sense that it was an Argent that set their home on fire and trapped their family inside, dooming them and sending Laura and Derek on the run for six years. It seemed like everywhere they turned they were running across another Argent. And the Argents had made their name killing Laura’s kind—it only fit that they were the culprits of the worst thing that ever happened in Laura’s life.

But just having the name would do nothing to help Laura get out from under their threat. She kept her voice steady as she could. “Mind if I take a picture?”

Allison cocked her head to the side. “Why?”

Laura swallowed. “I like jewelry.” She glanced quickly over at Derek. “And my brother sometimes makes his own. I’m hoping he can make me something similar.”

Allison nodded happily, accepting Laura’s answer. Laura pulled out her phone and carefully steadied her hands to take a few pictures of the necklace. She nodded her thanks at Allison and the girl went back to her date with Scott. Laura slowly placed the phone down on the countertop and stared at the smoothed and shiny wood.

“You okay, Laura?” Stiles asked.

She blinked at him and finally answered. “Yeah.” She shook her head. “It’s nothing. Coffee?”

Stiles shrugged at her offer, obviously not quite believing her reassurances but not mentioning it further. He did order a coffee, though.

Laura wanted to run again. The urge to flee had been hardwired and reinforced since she was eighteen and escaping the smell of smoke. She darted glances around the near-empty coffee house, wondering if each person was only moments away from shooting at them with wolfsbane-tipped arrows.

Yet everyone sat calmly, talking and drinking coffee. Even Allison, the baby Argent, seemed pleasantly happy and non-murderous.

Derek though, looked just as spooked as she did. “I can pull the car up.”

She shook her head. “No. The Argents won’t try anything here.” She straightened her shoulders and surveyed the room once more. The people remained people—placid, completely ignorant people. Nothing had changed. Not really. “I’m not running anymore.”

Derek just stared back at her. After a long moment, he nodded just once. “Okay.” He backed from the counter, searching Laura’s face until he had to turn to sit at his table.

Laura patted the counter in thought. She _was_ tired of running. The Argents had driven her out of her home once before, and no doubt would try to do so again. But this was her home now, or could be. If she ran again, she’d be running for the rest of her life. And neither she nor Derek deserved that.

A customer walked up, interrupting Laura’s reverie. She forced herself to grin and fill his order. Once he was gone again, Laura dropped her chin in her propped up hand, and watched the crowd, considering the repercussions of taking a stand against the Argents.

 

Laura felt the noose ever tightening around her neck. She thought she known fear back when they first fled Beacon Hills for their lives, six years ago, newfound pack status thundering through her veins and the complete and utter chaos of pack lines broken, permanently burnt and dead, attracting all kinds of less-than-human ne’er-do-wells to town. She thought she had known what it was like to be hunted.

But knowing it was an _Argent_. The one family that had made their name synonymous with death, so skilled they were with hunting and killing their kind. The sole reason the silver bullet myth ever occurred was because of their surname.

Although the knowledge of her family’s killer was never far from her mind, Laura did find herself going about her daily life with more ease than she was expecting. It probably helped that the only Argent she saw for weeks was Allison. The girl seemed to have taken a liking to the coffee shop, and came in nearly every afternoon, right after school. Laura saw her more often than not with Scott, and frequently with Stiles in tow. But Allison was always present, even when the others were not, and Laura found herself befriending her, despite her family.

“Hey girl, how was school?” Laura greeted when Allison came through the door. Laura pulled out a cup, ready to fill it with whatever Allison ordered.

Allison seemed hesitant when she stepped up to the counter. She knocked her fist on the counter, once, in nervous thought. “Do you know my dad?”

Laura swallowed. “Chris Argent? Um, why do you ask?”

Allison shrugged. “I mentioned you last night and he—“ She shook her head.. “He doesn’t seem to like you much. You or Derek.”

Laura caught Derek’s eye from across the room. Both their heart rates had ratcheted up to panic levels. She just hoped Derek didn’t decide to bolt out the doors while she finished talking with Allison. She turned her attention back to Allison.

“What did your dad say? About us?” Laura tried to make it sound sincere, but it was hard to talk around her throat closing up with the need to run.

Allison fidgeted. “Just that, maybe, you guys could be dangerous? That I should be careful around you.” She pinned Laura with a stare. “What did he mean by that? You couldn’t—you _wouldn’t_ —“

Laura grabbed the girl’s hand. “We would never hurt you, Allison.” She caught Derek’s eye again, and he nodded back at her slowly, biting his lip. Laura leaned back from her sudden lunge across the counter. “The Hales and the Argents have a history between them. Not all of it good.” She shrugged. “Most of it not good, actually.”

The girl looked disbelieving. “You make it sound like a Hatfields and McCoys thing.”

Laura shrugged a shoulder. “It kind of is, at times.”

Allison pursed her lips. Finally, she said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Still.” Allison gave a smile, wry grin. “I feel like I should say something.”

Laura smiled sadly back. “Thank you.”

 

There was one thing wrong with Laura’s plan of avoiding the Argents, and it happened on a Wednesday. The moon rose bright and full an hour before sunset that evening, and it was driving both Laura and Derek crazy. She paced the room, running her hands through her hair while Derek sat on the bed, shoulders hunched and fists clenched on top of his thighs.

“If we stuck to the cabin area,” Laura said, spinning so she faced her brother.

Derek arched an eyebrow at her. “I thought the whole point of hiding out was so we _wouldn’t_ draw attention to ourselves.”

“Well, yes.” Laura started pacing again, the moon pulling at her skin and making her restless. She wanted to break out, run, feel the wind through her fur in a way she hadn’t felt in weeks. “But by staying near people, the Argents wouldn’t have a chance to catch us isolated again. And you and I _both_ need to get out of here, just for a few hours.”

Derek shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe.”

“Because no offense, baby bro, I need to get out or else I’m going to murder someone.”

Derek rolled his neck, stood up and stretched. “You could try.”

Laura snorted, but grinned. She headed towards her jacket and purse, noticing Derek sweep up his own jacket one-handed. Apparently Derek needed to get out just as much as she did—Laura had been expecting to need more of an argument to cajole her brother into running with her.

In the car, she laid down the rules. “No changing. Just running. We don’t need anyone gossiping about a couple of kids with glowing eyes and sharp teeth tomorrow morning.”

Derek rolled his eyes at her. “I’m not a pup, Laura.”

She gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I know. I just.” She didn’t finish her thought, and from the invasive silence pointed at her from the passenger side of the car, Derek wanted her to continue. But he didn’t press, and Laura didn’t know how to verbalize her worries anyway.

For the first time since they found themselves back in Beacon Hills, she and Derek pulled up into the public parking lot at the entrance of the Preserve. They parked the car next to the large, dust-covered SUV with Montana plates and jumped out of the vehicle.

Despite the slowly setting sun, there were still plenty of people milling about, either packing up cars, ready to leave for the day, or carrying backpacks full of camping gear deeper into the forest. She and Derek followed these people for a ways, until they hit a fork in the path that would lead them further into the trees. They took it at a run.

They slowed only when people approached. When the trail was empty, they chased each other like they hadn’t been able to in weeks, bounding off the trees and taking flying leaps at each other. Derek got in a particularly good swipe at Laura’s back that she twisted out of at last second, before both of them having to straighten up and act normally so a young couple with a baby backpack could pass. Laura nodded amicably at them, and even Derek looked pleasant.

Once the sun set fully, the random people walking the trails disappeared entirely, and Laura and Derek could really run the moon out of their systems. They kept close to the tents and populated areas, and kept their human shapes as well, just in case.

Hours later, Laura felt almost normal again, pleasantly tired and settled in her skin, despite not going furry. Derek looked better, too, panting hard and almost grinning at her.

Until a branch snapped in the distance. Laura whipped her head around to the sound, pinpointing it from deeper within the woods than she and Derek were. She signaled Derek, and together they crouched, edging backwards to the beaten path.

And that is exactly where she ran almost smack dab into Chris Argent. Laura whirled around, realizing too late they were not alone. The hunter stood not ten feet in front of her, crossbow in hand.

“Evening, Laura.”

Derek snarled next to her, and she elbowed him in the ribs. Laura straightened her shoulders. “It’s two in the morning.”

“Good morning, then,” he amended drily. Three more men emerged from between the trees behind him, also armed. Derek fidgeted next to her, but didn’t otherwise move.

“You’ve taken quite an interest in my daughter,” Argent said. He shifted the crossbow higher up his arm, the front end uncomfortably close to being aimed directly at Laura and Derek.

Laura scooted closer to Derek, until her sleeve brushed his. “You mean Allison? She’s pretty cool.”

Behind Argent, the men began to fan out, standing in a larger formation. More people approached from behind Laura, boxing them in. Laura swallowed a lump of panic in her throat. Derek’s heartbeat increased steadily.

“She speaks highly of you.”

Perhaps it was the moon making her stupid, but Laura was getting awfully tired of people threatening her for no damn good reason. She exaggerated a shrug, throwing her hands up. “She’s a cute girl. Bit of a coffee addict, though, but we all have flaws.”

“And your flaw being short of pack.” Around them, hunters leveled their weapons at Laura.

She choked and tried not to jump. This wasn’t just a chance encounter in the woods. Suddenly, Chris asking after his daughter made more sense than just pleasant conversation. He thought that Laura wanted Allison as part of her pack. She shook her head. “I wouldn’t bite her. Not unless she asked.”

Chris Argent took a step forward, the bolt on his bow lining directly with her heart. “Not _even_ if she asked.”

Another person approached from Laura’s left, clomping through the woods and making no effort to mask their presence. The smell of gunpowder and wolfsbane overpowered the scent of her person. Derek shrunk in on himself. Laura looked around, confused.

A woman bearing a shotgun walked into view, and Derek damn near jumped out of his skin. Laura grabbed his arm to steady him, and he whined, low and soft enough it was only audible to her.

“Aw, you started the party without me?” she said, walking right up to Chris Argent and nudging him in the shoulder. It was Kate Argent, of course. Chris’ sister, and incidentally, the woman that murdered Laura’s family.

Kate purred, eyeing Laura and Derek up and down. “What do we have here? A couple of lost puppies?” She flipped her shotgun to lean the barrel against her shoulder. “Wow. This one grew up in all the right places.”

Laura frowned. “No need to get all creepy. We’re just… talking.” She looked at Chris Argent pointedly in the eye.

Chris Argent passed an unreadable glance at his sister. Kate just pouted. “Kate,” he warned. “I thought you were checking the eastern end.”

The woman shrugged. “I did. There was nothing. Everything interesting is happening right here.” She grinned towards Laura and Derek.

Laura looked back and forth between Kate and Chris. The other hunters were stoic bystanders, only there for muscle—the main players were definitely the pair of siblings in the forefront. And Laura was starting to get the feeling that Chris was operating on less information about his sister than Laura.

Maybe it really _was_ the moon making her reckless, but Laura decided to rectify that. She crossed her arms over her chest and posed haughtily. “What _I_ find interesting is how you’re still walking around a free woman after what you did to my family.”

All three of them stopped—even Derek—and turned their attention towards Laura. The sassy, fun-loving façade fell from Kate’s face, and Chris’ carefully blank look morphed into surprise and confusion. “What are you implying?” he asked carefully.

Derek shuffled beside her. “Laura,” he whispered, but she shrugged him off.

“I’m not implying anything.” Laura stared hard at Kate. The woman glared back at her. “I’m _stating_ that she murdered our family six years ago.”

Kate started forward. “You little bitch.” Chris stopped her with an arm thrown sideways across her chest. The woman squawked in outrage.

“Do you have evidence?” Chris’ face was once again carefully blank.

Laura nodded. “Yes.” She did. Mostly. Some.

Christ turned on his sister. “We need to talk.”

Kate yelled over him, unheeding of his words. “She’s a liar! I didn’t—“

The other hunters shifted, confused and nervous as to what was playing out. Derek straightened up a bit from his wilted slouch, and stared with wide eyes at the hunters. Laura decided that if any time would be good for a getaway, now was it. She gripped Derek’s sleeve and started to move.

Chris turned, almost too late. “I’m not done with—“ But Kate already had her shotgun braced against her shoulder. She fired in Laura and Derek’s direction. Derek jumped to the side while Laura threw herself flat on the ground. Behind her, Laura could hear Kate pumping the gun, readying it for another shot. Chris yelled commands, trying to keep a grip on the situation and failing. Laura scrambled to her feet and leapt after Derek, who was already several yards away, heading deeper into the woods.

It wasn’t hard to break through the ring of hunters with all the shouting and confusion. She caught up with Derek easily, and looped around the back towards the parking lot. No one chased them. No one even tried.

Still, they hit the Camaro at a dead run. In moments, they were in the car and heading back to the hotel.

Laura really hoped she didn’t just fuck everything up.

 


	6. The Dogs Days are Over (so you better run)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of the road.

They had a routine now. Derek came with her to work, and hung in the corner of the shop, working on his artwork while Laura made coffee for people. Yesterday he had even sold a sketch to a young couple who seemed very enamored of his talents. Laura was sure he would have been more outwardly pleased if not for the whole imminent death thing.

Still, Laura was secretly proud of him.

It was a weekday, and Laura didn’t get off until four, so they didn’t have much in the way of people they knew make it through. Which was a bit sad, Laura mused, that she and Derek only seemed to know teenagers in this town.

And the sheriff.

When the clock hit four, her boss shooed her out from the back to go ‘feed her brother.’ “He looks half-starved,” the matronly woman scolded. Laura darted a peek at him, where he was sketching with his pad balanced on his knees. She shrugged. Derek looked the same as he always had to her.

With a friendly push, her boss wished her a good night. Laura waved her off and gathered Derek in her wake as she made for the door. They had parked around the side of the building, like they had been doing ever since that they started sticking to each other for safety.

Laura fumbled in her purse for her keys when Derek shouted, high-pitched and terrified behind her, “Laura!”

He shoved into her, hard, knocking her sideways against the car just as the crack-boom thundered from behind them. She twisted, putting her back to the solid metal frame of the vehicle, just in time to catch Derek as he landed heavily against her. She got an arm most of the way around his shoulder.

It was slick with blood.

She looked at Derek in confusion, gripping his blood-slicked shoulder tightly. He grunted at her. For a moment, she was having a hard time connecting the blood that soaked Derek’s shoulder with the same blood that coated her hands. She looked up, and saw people in the parking lot and on the sidewalk in front of the building, staring at them in shock. A few were crouching, and dashing out of the way of a green SUV that idled at the mouth of the parking lot. Laura stared at the vehicle.

The muzzle of rifle disappeared from the passenger window. Laura caught a glimpse of blonde hair before the car sped off.

Derek moaned, low and hurt against her chest. The world came rushing back to her in one sudden gust, screams of terror, the crying in the streets, the thick smell of blood and the sharply floral smell of wolfsbane flooding her nostrils.

Laura’s mind made the connection, no longer swimming in the fog from a second before. The blood. The gun. Derek’s been shot.

_Fuck._

“Wolfsbane,” Derek gasped out against her neck. Laura shifted his weight, propping him higher up so she could twist and get the doors of the Camaro open.

“I know, dumbass,” she growled back, then began to drag his limp and uncooperative body to the passenger side of the car. She wrenched the door open and flung him inside, shutting the door as soon as his legs were clear.

She was just opening her driver side door when her boss came rushing out towards them. “What happened?” the woman shouted, looking around. Her eyes alighted on Laura’s chest and stayed there, widening in horror. “I heard a gunshot. Laura…”

Laura looked down at herself. Her gray t-shirt was now stained with dark red blood, with lines of the blackish poison from the wolfsbane. She looked back up at her boss and waved her off. “I’m fine. My brother.” She opened the door. “I have to get him to a hospital.”

“But, the paramedics—“ the woman insisted.

“I’m faster.” Laura swung herself into her seat. “Call 9-1-1,” she instructed, and shut the door. She twisted the key in the ignition and gunned it out of the parking lot before she thought about putting a seatbelt on. Even then, she waited until she was forced to stop at a traffic light before reaching behind her to grab the strap.

Derek groaned next to her, hunched down low in his seat and clutching tightly at his shoulder. The black spidery veins of the wolfsbane seeping into his system peeked up from underneath the collar of his shirt.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Laura whispered. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Derek glared at her, eyes glowing blue.

Laura stopped counting time by minutes, concentrating her attention more on the labored breathing of her brother next to her, slowly bleeding all over her seat. Still, she felt that they made it to the vet’s in record time. The tires squealed as she spun into the parking lot with reckless abandon, sliding to a stop before she crashed into the powder blue Jeep in front of the building. She didn’t register it as Stiles’ Jeep until she had Derek out of the car and draped over her shoulder, a long, low groan of pain rumbling out of his chest as she hitched him up high enough she could walk.

Deaton, Stiles, and Scott all came thundering out of the building to stare at her. She kicked the car door shut with a foot as they stared, trying to take in the scene. “Help me,” she yelled at them. Derek coughed and dug his claws into her shoulder.

Thankfully, Deaton recovered from his shock faster than the boys did. “Scott, take care of my clients and close the shop.”

Scott blinked but nodded, and darted back into the building. Deaton grabbed Derek’s other side and helped carry him into the building while Stiles hovered, uncertain.

They must have scared the little old woman with the Chihuahua as they stumbled past her, but Laura didn’t really care. Stiles opened up the gate, holding it so they could shimmy through it, Laura swinging through first, Derek half-slumped over her back. They had him in the back examination rooms soon after.

Laura lifted Derek completely and laid him in the table. Stiles lingered in the doorway, pulling at the hem of his shirt. “What?” he started, but didn’t seem to know how to finish.

Deaton turned to him. “Go in my office. Top right hand side drawer. There’s a box with carvings on it.” He didn’t even need to tell Stiles to fetch it, Stiles was already bounding away, running as fast as the numerous obstacles and close spaces would allow. The vet, meanwhile, was already scrubbing his hands in the sink. Derek groaned low in his throat, eyes flashing and teeth sharpening into fangs. Laura squeezed his hand as they waited.

Stiles reappeared, box in hand. Deaton directed him to place it on the wheeled cart with various examination and medical tools on it. Laura knew the kid saw what Derek couldn’t hide, not with the wolfsbane poisoning his system. Stiles stared wide-eyed at them, at Derek’s decidedly inhuman teeth and glowing blue eyes, and the claws that were just starting to slip out as he gripped Laura’s hand tightly.

“Do you know who shot you?” Deaton asked. Laura shook her head.

“Didn’t see a face. Someone in a car with a rifle. A drive-by.” She squeezed Derek’s hand and wiped the hair turning tacky with sweat out of his face. “Can you…?”

Deaton turned to the box Stiles brought and flipped the lid open with a practiced hand. He pulled out a small vile filled with bluish powder, and set it aside. "I need to draw the bullet out, then counteract the wolfsbane.” He wheeled the mobile tray of tools over to where Derek lay, panting. He slipped on gloves as he spoke. “It would help to know what kind of wolfsbane they used.”

“Pretty sure it was the Argents,” Laura offered.

“Argent?” Stiles asked. But Laura was looking at the vet and the vet was looking at Derek. Derek lay gasping with his eyes closed.

“They tend to prefer the Northern Blue strand, if I’m not mistaken.” Deaton hummed idly to himself as he cut away Derek’s shirt. Peeling back the soaked fabric, he revealed the bloody mess of Derek’s shoulder. Laura heard Stiles stifle a gasp and a prayer, but the rest of her attention was riveted on the hamburger pulp that was once Derek’s shoulder and the blackness that radiated under his skin from it. “And fragmenting rounds,” Deaton added, to no one’s benefit.

With that, he began tweezing his way through the meat of Derek’s shoulder, pulling away flecks of metal and bone alike, dropping them onto the little dish on his surgical tray. He had a tidy little pile when he directed Stiles, “Take the vial, and set fire to the powder. Then put the ash in water.”

Stiles looked as pale as Derek, but he didn’t balk at the order. He grabbed the vial and dumped its contents on the steel table shoved against the wall. He looked around, then, wide-eyed and lost. “I don’t have a lighter.”

“Supply cabinet. Bottom drawer,” Deaton said, pulling out a large fragment of bullet out of Derek’s shoulder. Derek hissed a breath and Laura tried pulling more of his pain out through their clenched hands, but the wolfsbane kept fighting her.

Stiles apparently found the lighter, and he flicked it to life. He touched the flame to the little pile of powder. It flared, sending a tendril of sharp, stinging smoke into the air. Laura watched as he swept up the burnt powder into a beaker of water, then soaked a square of surgical gauze in the solution and handed it off to Deaton, who finally put his forceps down on the tray, all little fragments of bullet accounted for. She frowned at the thought of Stiles being dragged into this mess, but the sound of Derek choking on pain made her bite her tongue. She would just have to deal with the fallout later.

“This is going to hurt,” Deaton said.

Derek glared and flashed his teeth at the man. Deaton merely eyed him calmly and slapped the cloth over Derek’s shoulder.

The howl that erupted from Derek’s throat was the single most devastating sound Laura had ever heard. Stiles clapped his hand over his ears, rocking backwards. Even Deaton looked pained.

Laura just put her head down on her brother’s chest and held on.

Derek gasped for air, but already the black that had been creeping up the side of his neck and over his chest was beginning to recede. Deaton hummed thoughtfully and began winding gauze and bandages around his shoulder. “You,” he commented, “are very lucky.”

Derek coughed out his annoyance. “Lucky. Right.”

Laura looked up to see Stiles’ friend, Scott, hovering in the doorway. “What’s going on?” he whispered when Laura caught his eye.

She looked down at her brother, then to the three other people in the room. Stiles was also staring at them, eyes no less questioning than Scott’s, but filled more with wonder than fear. He looked about half a second away from bursting at the seams with questions.

Deaton just looked blank.

Laura really didn’t have time for this. She stroked the hair away from Derek’s eyes once more, and backed away from the table. He followed her with concerned eyes. She patted his hand. “I gotta go.”

Derek tried to sit up, wincing and clutching his shoulder. Deaton placed a hand on his stomach and pushed him back down. Laura stepped around the table and made for the door.

Stiles stopped her. “I want answers.”

“Not right now, Stiles.”

“Laura.” Stiles’ voice was strong and hard and just a bit panicked. Laura carefully plucked his hand away from her wrist.

“I need to go talk to your dad before any more of us get shot.” She let out a breath. “I’ll tell you later, okay? Just one thing at a time.”

Stiles nodded, shakily. He stepped back, towards Deaton and Derek. She nodded back and mouthed ‘thank you’ at him before turning away completely. Scott allowed her passage through the door, though she had the feeling that he would be a flurry of questions once she left.

She felt bad for leaving Derek in the belly of that nest of inquisitive beasts, but she really didn’t have much of a choice. She had to get to the sheriff’s quickly, before any more Argents could decide to try their luck for a third time.

 

Laura got the bright idea to call John as she hit main street traffic. “Sheriff Stilinski?” she asked as the call connected.

“Laura!” he said. “Are you okay? I just heard about the gunshot over at The Coffee Cup.”

“Yeah,” Laura reassured, then shook her head. “I mean, no. I.” She stopped, tapping her hand on her steering wheel. “Are you still at the station? I really need to talk to you.”

Something in her voice must have tipped him off. He repeated, “Are you okay, Laura?”

She gasped out a sob, too slow to contain it. “No, I’m really not.”

John paused at her words. “I’ll be waiting right by the door. Drive carefully, kiddo.”

Laura nodded before realizing he wouldn’t be able to see it. “Okay.” She hung up the phone, tossing it into the seat next to her, where it squelched in the still-tacky puddle of Derek’s blood. Jesus Christ, her car was a mess.

Hell, her whole life was a mess.

She took a circuitous route, shying far away from the coffee shop that was no doubt crawling with cops and possibly Argents. She still jumped at every car that pulled up behind her, but all of them eventually pulled off. Still, she didn’t breathe easy until she was parked in front of the doors to the sheriff’s office, John Stilinski shadowing the doorway with a cup in his hand.

She grabbed her phone and quickly jumped out of the car, darting into the building. He looked at her, worry clear in his eyes. She looked over her shoulder. “Can we, um?”

“Office is back this way,” he said, tilting his head. She followed him to the little side door past the reception desk and down a long hallway. They arrived at a door marked ‘SHERIFF’ which he held open for her. She walked inside and felt much safer now that she had four solid walls with one entrance and only one little window to worry about.

The sheriff went to his chair behind the desk, sinking into it. “Wanna tell me what’s going on?” He nudged the cup towards her.

Laura sat in one of the two chairs that were stationed in front of the desk. They were oddly comfortable, if a bit plain. She reached for the cup and was surprised to find it was actually tea, not coffee like she assumed. She dragged it towards her with both hands and breathed in its steam.

Now that she was here, she didn’t really know where to start. The sheriff didn’t pressure her, though, and allowed her the time to sift through her swirling thoughts. Finally, she said, “I think Kate Argent is trying to kill us.”

“You and Derek.”

Laura nodded. The sheriff shifted in his seat. “Why do you think that?”

She bit her lip. She honestly had no idea if she was going to get in trouble for poking around her family’s murder. Mentally shrugging, she decided if anyone would understand, it’d be the Stilinskis. “I’ve been looking into the fire.” She didn’t need to clarify which one. “I know she started it. And she knows that _I_ know now.” She paused, playing with the string attached to the tea bag, swirling it in a circle. “She shot Derek.”

The sheriff leaned forward. “Derek got shot? At the café?”

Laura nodded. “He’s fine. Will be, I mean. They stopped the bleeding and everything.” They being Deaton, but… John didn’t need to know they never actually _went_ to the hospital.

“Jesus, Laura.”

She took a sip of her tea. She knew that it wasn’t good that they didn’t wait for paramedics—at least, not in the human’s eyes. But Derek would probably be dead if she had. “I’ve been poking around. The fire never—it didn’t seem right. And, I thought maybe someone had started it.”

“Laura.”

“I know.” She huffed a breath. “I just thought—it’s been six years. What’s me asking questions _now_ going to hurt? And I needed to know.”

The man was quiet, staring Laura down. Not in anger, though, but in contemplation. She counted his heartbeats until he spoke again. “Did you find anything?”

Laura nodded slowly. “I talked to Adrian Harris.” She told him what the teacher had told her—the bar, the woman, the questions she asked and the necklace she wore. She dug her phone out of her pocket and flipped to the pictures she had taken of Allison’s necklace. “I found the necklace, too. Allison Argent has it now, but she says her aunt gave it to her. It’s the same necklace that Harris described—the exact same.” She pulled her notebook out of her jacket and unfolded the picture Harris had drawn for her.

The sheriff examined both her cellphone and the picture. He put both back on the desk and sighed. “That’s not a lot to go on.”

“I know.” Laura shook her head. “But I know it’s her. Both she and Chris Argent have made threatening comments towards me.”

“Chris?” The sheriff looked shocked. “Look, I know Chris. He helps supply the station with…” He trailed off, eyes narrowing and going hard as he gazed somewhere over her right shoulder.

She had one last card left to play. She only hoped she wasn’t about to screw everything up. “He’s got something against my family. I don’t know what,” Laura said. “But the way he talks? It’s like just because I’m a Hale makes me something… less than human.”

The sheriff looked at her for a very long, breathless moment. Laura felt like it would go on forever, if not for a knock on the door. He looked up, and beckoned the person to come in.

Even though Laura could tell by the scent before the door was even fully open, she was still surprised to see Derek’s face. “I need to talk to you,” he mumbled. He caught Laura’s eye and hunched in on himself. He turned his gaze away. “Alone.”

Laura stood up as Derek slunk inside the small room. “Derek,” she started. Despite his height and size, he shrunk in on himself until he was almost smaller than her. He all but flinched when she said his name.

It was the sheriff’s turn to say her name. He smiled, kindly, and waved at the door. “There are some chairs outside, if you could wait.”

She looked between the two men, one in his sheriff’s uniform, kind and weathered behind the desk, and the other her brother, young and tired and paled, in a borrowed shirt (a plaid button-up that barely fit him) with bandages peeking underneath the sleeve. He’d probably be mostly healed by now, except for the damage done to the bone. She nodded, and turned to leave.

Derek caught her by the wrist. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Laura shook her head. “It’s okay.” She had no idea what was going on in that boy’s head, but she thought maybe there were things he couldn’t say with his sister sitting in the room.

Of course, he had to know that she would be listening in. What kind of sister would she be if she didn’t?

She slipped out of the room and shut the door behind her. Outside, she was surprised to see Stiles sitting in one of the two chairs right outside the door. He gave a little wave. “S’up Laura.”

She lowered herself into the seat next to him. Inside the office, Derek started with the Sheriff. “I’m guessing she told you about Kate.”

Stiles turned next to her. “You and Derek, huh?”

Laura looked at the kid. He seemed genuinely curious—wide-eyed with a smile tugging at his lips, a hint of flush to his cheeks. She quirked her head to the side, listening in on the conversation in the room behind her while considering Stiles’ not-quite-asked question. Finally, she nodded.

“Yup. Me and Derek. Most of my family, too.”

Stiles nodded, like that made sense. “Just to be sure—not vampires, right?”

Chuckling under her breath, Laura shook her head. “No. Not vampires.”

Nodding absently, Stiles looked off, staring at the wall across from them. “Right, right. A more… moon-like creature.”

“Yup.”

Inside, Derek’s heartbeat skyrocketed. Laura whipped her head in the direction of the solid, closed door. “I met Kate when I was fifteen,” Derek whispered.

She was only dimly aware of Stiles trying to get her attention beside her, repeating her name and tugging on her arm. She was transfixed on the story that poured from her brother’s lips, his heartbeat skipping and beating wildly in pent-up anxiety and other emotions.

Derek met Kate when he was fifteen.

She was twenty-four.

She was his substitute teacher. History class.

They had dated. He romanced her. She seduced him.

She took him to an abandoned distillery (one of many in this woe-begotten town) and had sex.

They kept having sex. She’d pick him up after school. Drive around town until they found a good place.

He fell in love with her.

She called him nice things. Like handsome. And clever.

They met for _months_.

He told her about the reunion. Every year, the Hales would gather. Grandma Tabitha. Father’s brothers. Mom’s sister. Their cousins. Everyone. They used to gather at their parent’s house, the original Hale homestead. A mansion in its own right, with all the additions and wings built onto it over the years.

Everyone was always there. _Always._

And then. And then.

“Laura?” Stiles was shaking her now, hands on her shoulders, a panicked look on his face. She realized, belatedly, that she was crying. She reached up and smeared the tears off her cheek.

“I,” she started, but didn’t know how to finish. She got up, startling Stiles backwards. “I got to go.” She walked down the hallway.

Stiles continued to shout her name until she was out of sight.

 

Laura drove back to their hotel in a fog. She really didn’t have a destination in mind, just that she knew she needed to get out of the Sheriff’s station, and their hotel room seemed as good a place as any. Safer than running out in the woods with Kate Argent literally gunning after them.

She forewent the elevator to run some of the restless, buzzing emotion out on the stairs. The sixth floor came all too soon. She stepped lightly into the hallway, scenting it for any presence. Other than the fading smell of bleach and fresh linens—the maid must have come by in the last few hours—there was nothing. Arriving at her door, she opened it and paused, standing in the doorway.

There, on the opposite wall, was Derek’s covered artwork, where they had been ever since they had so quickly fled the motel room weeks ago. He hadn’t worked on them since he had placed them covered with sheets and tarps in the corner by the window.

She wasn’t quite sure what brought her to cross the room and swept off the sheet covering the paintings. She flipped them around, staring at what Derek had been working these last two and a half months to create.

They were rabbits. All of them. Realist depictions mixed with cartoony homages, even a Dali-esque rendition of a stretched-out rabbit draped across a carrot.

Laura didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

She considered smashing them—kicking in the canvas and snapping the wood that held its shape. Instead, she propped them back against the wall and sank onto her brother’s bed, head in her hands.

She was angry at Derek. And Kate. A lot at Kate. But some at Derek. All this time, and he had known. He had _hidden_ it from her, what Kate did to him. Had known who it was who had killed their family, and he told _no one_. Didn’t even tell her, not really.

All these years, and he told _no one_. Not even his own sister.

She didn’t quite know when she started crying again, but when a sob escaped her, tearing out of her mouth like a wolf clawing at the dirt of her throat, she realized she had been crying for a while.

It wasn’t Derek’s fault, she realized. Not really. He had been a kid—hell, he still was a kid, and so was she. Kate was older than Laura was when she seduced Derek and destroyed their family. A full-grown woman going after a fifteen-year-old impressionable boy. If it was anyone’s fault, it was Kate’s.

She hated Kate. She wanted her dead, wanted to feel the woman’s blood beneath her claws, between her teeth, and down her throat. She wanted to swallow the woman’s last earthly cries before her teeth sent her to hell.

She certainly deserved it.

But Laura couldn’t. Not like this. Laura got up, finally, limbs stiff from shaking, face sore from tears. She clicked the light off and locked the door behind her. Maybe it was six years too late, but she was going to find her brother and finally, finally, it would be over.

Maybe then they could both move on.

 

She called Stiles as she got to her car. He answered immediately. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” She slipped in behind the driver’s wheel, and balancing the phone between her car and shoulder, pulled out into traffic. “Where’s Derek?”

“He’s here,” he answered, quietly. “Back at my house.”

Laura nodded absently. “Okay. Don’t let him leave.”

Stiles took in a breath like he was going to argue. She cut him off. “Please.”

He sighed. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Thank you.” She hung up and flung the phone down. The seat beside her was filthy with dried blood and the black residue typical of wolfsbane poisoning. She’d have to get the car detailed later.

Maybe she could get Stiles to do it.

It didn’t take her long to make it to the Stilinski household; evening traffic had long since slowed down to a post-dinner emptiness. She pulled up behind Stiles’ Jeep and exited the car. She rang the doorbell and waited.

It was John that opened the door. Laura saw over his shoulder Stiles sitting with Derek in the living room. His head was down and elbows braced on his knees while Stiles had a hand on his back, whether to offer comfort or to hold him still, she didn’t know.

She turned to the sheriff. “May I come in?”

The man held open the door for her. “I think you better.”

She didn’t know what he meant by that. Pulling her jacket tighter around her, she followed John into the house. She marched right in front of Derek, Stiles and his father watching her carefully. What did they think she was going to do?

She stood right in front of him. “Derek.”

He flinched at his name.

Laura squared her shoulders. “I saw your paintings.” Derek didn’t react visibly, but his heartbeat sped up for a few beats before settling back into an eerie calm. Laura sucked in a breath, and spilled out her planned speech before she lost her nerve in the drastic slouch of Derek’s shoulders. “And I know what they mean. I’m not stupid.”

Another flinch, but he still didn’t look up.

Laura ran a hand through her hair. “Did you think I would leave? Did you think that when I found out that I wouldn’t—that I wouldn’t.” She stopped, and swallowed hard, desperately trying to keep the quaver out of her voice. She heard the Stilinskis sneaking quietly into the kitchen, giving them the illusion of privacy, for which she was grateful.

“I _wouldn’t,_ Derek,” she whispered. “I would _never_ leave you. Not even for that.”

“It’d be better for you if you did,” Derek said, voice barely rising above the sound of his breath. “Safer.”

Laura crouched, tired of standing over Derek like a scolding mother. She grabbed his hands. “That’s not true. It’s not your fault.”

Derek shrugged. She gripped his hands tighter, squeezing them instead of shaking him back and forth like she wanted to. “Why didn’t you tell me? Is it because you thought I would leave? That I wouldn’t still trust you?” She bit back a sob. “That I wouldn’t love you anymore?”

He shrugged again, and Laura leaned forward to bury her head in his lap. Her words were muffled against the fabric of his jeans, but she knew that he would still hear her. Could still hear her heartbeat and smell her sorrow. “Because it isn’t true. I still love you, Derek. I won’t leave you. Not ever. Not for this.” She kissed his thigh and he buried his hands in her hair.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. She looked up at him.

Derek was pale and his eyes red rimmed, like he had been crying, too. She wiped the wetness from her cheeks. “The rabbits were a goodbye, weren’t they? The last thing you could do to make me happy, right? Because you thought that I—” She shook her head. “You want to do something for me? Then paint, Derek. Paint something for you. Whatever you want. Or hell, don’t paint. Go for a run. Chop down a tree. Set something on fucking _fire_ , I don’t care. Just.” She reached up to grab the sides of his face. “Do something for _you_.”

He stared at her for a long moment. Rather, Laura supposed, they stared at each other, neither of them looking away as they sought for something in the other’s faces. Laura just hoped that Derek got what she was trying to tell him, that he understood the message and was willing to carry it out, not because of her but for _him._

She didn’t know what Derek was looking for in her. Sincerity, maybe.

“Okay,” he said.

Laura breathed out a sigh of relief. She smiled. “Okay.”

Derek answered with a slow, upturn of lips, low and hopeful. Laura nodded, her smile growing wider and repeated. “Okay.”

They stayed like that for a long time.

 

Eventually, though, they did have to get up, having invaded the Stilinskis’ living room for their sibling bonding moment. In a show of generosity Laura never expected (and didn’t dare attempt to rely on, no matter how many times the man told her “Anything, kiddo. Just let me know.”) Mr. Stilinski asked them to stay for a late dinner. Laura glanced at Derek only to find him edging back towards Stiles. One emotional trauma and subsequent breakthrough today was enough, but she made a note to herself to revisit her brother’s kinship with Stiles in the morning. Maybe wrestle some more confessions out of her brother.

In the meantime, she accepted the dinner offer.

And, at Stiles' insistence, she accepted the offer to stay the night. The kid dragged Derek off to play video games with him before bed, while Laura at the sheriff relaxed. And talked. A lot about the fire, and what Derek’s confession would mean for the investigation. An investigation that, Stilinski admitted, had been reopened in the last six years and subsequently deemed classified by the FBI, who had an alarmingly large file on similar fires across the country. Laura stared at Mr. Stilinski with wide eyes. She hadn’t really thought about the possibility of Kate Argent destroying other families.

Mr. Stilinski put a hand on Laura’s knee. “We can get a warrant to search Kate Argent’s vehicle. If we can get her on the drive-by this afternoon, and with what you and Derek have provided, we’ll have enough evidence to arrest her for the fire.”

Laura nodded dumbly. “Okay.”

He gave her a quick run-down of what would happen next, if Kate Argent was indeed brought into custody. She’d go to bail sentencing, but considering the crime and her potential for being a flight risk, Mr. Stilinski didn’t think they’d even offer her bail.

Laura had no problem with that. She’d feel a lot better if Kate was locked up.

Mr. Stilinski couldn’t blame her for that.

It was nice, having another person, a person with experience and a level head, to talk with and garner advice. Laura went to bed feeling almost hopeful.

 

It took a few days for the sheriff to wade through the legal red tape, but come Monday morning, Stiles texted Laura that the sheriff was going to make the arrest. Laura gathered Derek up from his newest painting, something he did in the same room as her, despite the back of it pointing at her (baby steps, she said fondly to herself—great, big, tottering baby steps), and hustled him into the Camaro, red and black paint on his clothes.

Stiles, bless his foresight, texted her the address where the arrest was going down as well. Laura was glad most of the cops were more interested in the soon-to-be-capture of Beacon Hills' most infamous arsonist/mass murderer than policing the traffic laws as she ripped through the city streets.

They parked a street away in the nice, new development neighborhood Stiles’ text sent them. She and Derek carefully picked their way closer to the house where the Sheriff’s cruiser just pulled up. They ended up ducking behind a neighbor’s rose bush to keep from being spotted as the sheriff and a deputy climbed out of the car and approached the house.

Laura did look behind her, only to spot an elderly woman peeking out her curtains, equally curious as to what’s going down across the street and what these two kids were doing on her lawn. Laura gave her a half-hearted shrug. The woman nodded and pointedly turned back to watch the police cars.

Even at their distance, Laura could easily pick out the conversation taking place at the front door. The sheriff rang the doorbell, and none other than Chris Argent answered. Both she and Derek went very still at the sight of the man. Laura then realized that the address Stiles sent them must be the Argent’s home address. (Of course, Kate would stay with her brother while she was in town. Of course.)

The sheriff and Chris exchanged pleasantries, but it was clear that both of them were stiff. Argent knew something was off. It thrilled Laura a bit, to see the man shaken and uncertain.

The sheriff put his hands on his hips, right hand close to his weapon. “Chris,” he started. “Is your sister in?”

Chris Argent stood still for a moment. The sheriff shifted his weight, perhaps gearing up for some kind of showdown. But Argent cocked his head and called out behind him. “Kate!”

Laura smelled it before she heard it, the spike of pungent adrenaline that flooded the back of the house, the smell of prey gearing up for flight, before a crashing sound came from deep in the dwelling. Derek startled, ready to back up and return to their car, but Laura steadied him with a hand on his shoulder.

What Chris Argent couldn’t see from his vantage point at the front door were the two other cruisers parked on either ends of the street, far away from the view of the house. No doubt the sheriff had sent deputies to ease carefully around the perimeter of the dwelling, keeping an eye out on any and all exits of the place, in case that Kate Argent decided _not_ to come quietly. Laura and Derek only had to wait a few moments before they saw a deputy calmly walking around the side of the house, pushing forward a struggling woman with her hands cuffed behind her back. Derek let out a noisy exhalation of breath. Laura migrated the hand that had been on his back up to his neck, where she cuffed him reassuringly.

It was Kate Argent. No doubt about it.

Laura heard the deputy read the woman her Miranda rights, which she seemed to completely ignore once she got in sight of Chris still standing in the doorway.

“Chris! You can’t let them do this to me!” she screeched.

Chris Argent stood in dumbfounded horror as the sheriff’s men led the woman to the awaiting police vehicles. “Chris!” his sister tried again. Laura could smell the sickly acrid stench of fear build up on Kate even from where Laura crouched almost half a dozen houses away. “Don’t let those monsters do this to me! You know what I mean to this family! Don’t let those monsters get _away_ with this!”

Then the deputy shoved Kate Argent in the back of the squad car and shut the door on her. From behind the house, the rest of the deputies the sheriff had brought came trudging out. One of them shook his head. “That woman murdered an entire family, and she calls us monsters?”

Laura couldn’t resist the snort of amusement at that. She knew all too well to what monsters Kate Argent referred.

The sheriff, ever a kind man, patted Chris Argent awkwardly on the shoulder. “Sorry, Chris.”

Chris Argent shook his head. “It needed to be done.”

With a final nod, the sheriff turned and walked away, leaving Chris Argent still at his front door, watching as the car that held his sister rolled down the driveway and sped away. Within minutes, all the police were gone, and he took a deep breath and shut his door.

Well. That was that. It was over now.

Laura stood up, brushing the grass from her knees where they were pressed into the lawn. She reached a hand down to Derek. He took it and pulled himself up. He squared his shoulders and looked one last time at the Argent house, but didn’t let go of his sister’s hand.

And they left like that, walking beside each other, without a word.

END

P.S.: They totally got milkshakes for breakfast, though. They earned them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! I hope you liked Laura as much as I liked writing her.
> 
> I'd also like to thank [mikkimouse ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkimouse/pseuds/mikkimouse) for being a wonderful and fantastic human being, and for betaing this story for me and encouraging me to finish it. Without her, I don't think this thing would exist. Thank you dear, for everything.
> 
> Come find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ErisOReilly) and [tumblr!](http://domesticated-chaos.tumblr.com/)


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